Sam Lee's work is a testament to the power of traditional songs and ritual to speak to modern audiences.

A Mercury prize nominated singer, composer, folksong interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and creator of live events, Sam plays a unique role in the British music scene. During a stint as a burlesque dancer, he stumbled across traditional British folk song and embarked on a mission of song collecting, eventually spending years recording songs from Gypsy Traveller communities that continue to face societal oppression and persecution.

Sam also released a novel, The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird (Penguin 2023), a product of his ongoing Singing with Nightingales project where he performs live night-time concerts in the British countryside. 

As a change-maker in the music industry, he is a co-founder of Music Declares Emergency and the pioneering artist to work with leading environmental charity Earthpercent to whom proceeds of his newset album 'songdreaming' will be donated.

As well as his experiences with ayahuasca, Sam's passion for igniting and rejuvenating tradition in the modern world struck a chord with Onaya's work and anchored an important and nourishing conversation.

*** We are now recruiting for the next cohort of our 6-month accredited Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, beginning in April. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount. ***

This podcast is part of Onaya’s Breaking Convention series, spotlighting speakers at the intersection of science and spirituality in the run up to the conference. For a 10% discount on your ticket purchase to Breaking Convention (17-19 April at the University of Exeter), you can use our code 'ONAYA10' at the checkout: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/breakingconvention.

Is the universe aware of itself, or is consciousness just a side effect of brain activity? What do Indigenous shamanism and theories like panpsychism have in common? Why is psychology blind to its huge limitations? And can dieting master plants show us what it's really like to be a bat?

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a philosopher, specialising in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics, and in fields relating to panpsychism, pantheism, and altered states of consciousness. 

He lectures at The University of Exeter where he is a lead on the new Master’s programme in Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine, and Culture, the first of its kind in the world. Peter is also co-director of Europe’s largest psychedelics conference, Breaking Convention; author of two books, and co-editor of Philosophy and Psychedelics (Bloomsbury 2022); and the speaker of a popular TEDx Talk on ‘Consciousness and Psychedelics’.

*** We are now recruiting for the next cohort of our 6-month accredited Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, beginning in April. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount. ***

This podcast is part of Onaya’s Breaking Convention series, spotlighting speakers at the intersection of science and spirituality in the run up to the conference. For a 10% discount on your ticket purchase to Breaking Convention (17-19 April at the University of Exeter), you can use our code 'ONAYA10' at the checkout: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/breakingconvention.

Psychedelic history has a complex relationship with queerness. In 1966, Timothy Leary declared LSD a "cure for homosexuality”, and the use of psychedelics in so-called 'conversion therapy' reinforced the pathologising of queerness for years.

Times have changed, as gay and transgender rights movements intersect heavily with the world of psychedelics, but injustice and exclusion remain.

Dr. Matthew X. Lowe is a research scientist, educator and advisor, specialising in human brain function and behaviour across a range of topics in cognition, perception, mental health, psychedelics, and cannabis use. Nowadays, his focus is on marginalised and underrepresented communities in psychedelic research.

Having previously worked as a scientist at MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, he leads research at Realm of Caring, and Unlimited Sciences, two non-profit organisations focused on cannabis and psychedelics, respectively. He is also a Scientific Advisor and Lead Educator for the Oregon Psychedelic Institute.

* * *

Links from this conversation:

• 'Long-term benefits to psychological health and well-being after ceremonial use of Ayahuasca in Middle Eastern and North African immigrants and refugees' by Matthew Lowe's team: published in Frontiers in Psychiatry (2024).
• Queering Psychedelics by the Chacruna Institute.
• Psychedelics and the LGBTQIA+ Community by Unlimited Sciences.
• Unverified archived transcript of Timothy Leary's interview with Playboy in 1966.
• LSD and Sexuality by Richard Alpert.
• Info Line by Unlimited Sciences: a free, 24-hour phone line offering research-based information on psychedelics.

*** We are now recruiting for the next cohort of our 6-month accredited Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, beginning in April. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount. ***

- - - EDIT (1st April 2025) - - -

After a fact-checking query from a listener regarding claims by Dr Matthew Lowe about the involvement of Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Timothy Leary in so-called 'conversion therapy', we have included links (above) to a paper from Alpert and an unverified but widely reported interview with Leary, as well as articles by Chacruna Institute and Unlimited Sciences.

In the published paper 'LSD and Sexuality', Alpert (who was himself queer) describes efforts to treat a bisexual man for his homosexuality. Leary is not directly implicated in 'conversion therapy' but is quoted as saying "we've had many cases of long-term homosexuals" at his centre who 'converted', and that "LSD is a specific cure for homosexuality".

Simon's shock described in the introduction about Matthew's claim regarding their involvement was not meant as definitive confirmation of it. Dr Matthew Lowe and Unlimited Sciences would be best suited to respond directly to any further queries!

Navigating the shadows of transformation, this multi-perspectival conversation about psychedelics’ therapeutic applications moves though Satya’s personal story to the division between science and spirituality; also covering the shadow aspects of working with plants, the challenge of collective healing in a time of crisis, war and peace, and the future prospects of humanity.

Satya describes herself as a consciousness activist, working with different modalities to bring together traditional rituals and contemporary techniques, including firewalking, vision quests, and plant medicines.

She has spent many years based in the Amazon rainforest, working extensively with ayahuasca, and is now involved in many projects across the globe.

*** We are now recruiting for the next cohort of our 6-month accredited Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, beginning in April. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount. ***

Mareesa Stertz is a filmmaker, storyteller, artist, and community organiser dedicated to fostering collective healing and transformation. 

As a co-steward of the Global Psychedelic Society and co-founder of Lucid News, Mareesa has been building platforms that destigmatise, educate, and build community around psychedelics. 

Her film work includes producing and hosting the documentary series The Healing Powers (of Psychedelics and Other Mindful Practices) and Damanhur, both streaming on Gaia TV and Amazon.

She has shared her experiences on international stages and through teaching, workshops, and retreats, and is developing a large-scale immersive art project for Burning Man 2025.

This conversation covered:

• the journey that led to her first documentary in Peru
• the prevalence of burn out, repression of emotion and storytelling in Western culture
• truth vs fact
• the information contained within stories
• Onaya’s work and the difficulties of translating from Indigenous paradigms 
• the hero’s journey, and why it shows up again and again in our stories
• Jung’s concept of individuation
• the challenge of compassionately reframing trauma and hardship

and other topics.

*** We are now recruiting for the next cohort of our 6-month accredited Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, beginning in April. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount. ***

Dr Vanessa León-Sulca is a Medical Doctor and Psychotherapist of Quechua lineage, with expertise in combining Ayurvedic traditional medicine and ayahuasca.

Having first pursued careers in politics and finance, she was forced into a profound healing journey of her own. Since then, Vanessa has immersed herself in the shamanic traditions and Andean cosmology from her native Peru.

She has also written on the historic trauma of colonisation in Peru from a psychotherapeutic perspective and is conducting ongoing research in this area, and has dived into the fascinating modality that is Ayurvedic medicine from India: the main topic of today's conversation.

Vanessa León-Sulca is one of many experts on Onaya's 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

We spend a third of our lives asleep, immersed in richly altered states of consciousness that have been valued by traditional societies throughout human history, but dismissed or ignored by mainstream Western culture.

Swimming against this tide, Maria Nazdravan is a dreamwork facilitator, writer, and trainee integrative transpersonal and trauma psychotherapist, specialising in working creatively with imaginal and body-based interventions. She also runs the Dreamwork Circle, a supportive space for regular group sessions to foster self-discovery and transformation.

Simon and Maria explore her passion for helping others learn the symbolic language of the unconscious and foster healthy relationships with their dreams, through different perspectives offered by Freud, Jung and their followers, as well as Gestalt therapy, depth psychology and shamanic traditions.

Maria Nazdravan is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

Carlos Tanner has been studying the science and art of plant medicine in the Amazon Rainforest for twenty years.

He currently works as the director of the Ayahuasca Foundation, a non-profit organisation he founded in 2009 in Iquitos, Peru. They organise healing retreats and educational courses led by Indigenous Shipibo healers, to help people in need of healing or those interested in learning ancestral healing traditions of the Amazon.

Since 2017, the Ayahuasca Foundation has collaborated with Onaya Science at the Riosbo Research Centre in the Peruvian Amazon, looking at the effects of ayahuasca retreats on mental health, spiritual wellbeing, personality and nature connectedness, and biological changes.

You can see much more about this research – including our ongoing long-term study of military veterans with PTSD – via our website.

In this episode, Carlos spoke to Simon about:

• His life story through the American Dream, addiction and a near-death promise to God
• A calling to the jungle to train with Shipibo healers in the Amazon, and the establishing of the Ayahuasca Foundation
• The essence of shamanism and the preservation of Shipibo culture
• The misunderstood concepts of ‘energy’, ‘faith’ and ‘placebo’ in ancestral and Western medicine
• Healing as an art form, as well as a science
• The divergence of different ancestral spiritual traditions

... and a range of other topics.

Carlos Tanner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

Dr Beatriz Caiuby Labate is a Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco. She has a PhD in social anthropology, and is the author, or co-author or co-editor of twenty-eight books and many peer-reviewed articles, focusing on the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. 

She is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves as Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), amongst other roles.

In this episode, Simon and Bia explored:

• frustrations with academia and the story behind Chacruna
• psychedelic justice and the work of the Institute
• building bridges and mending fences
• the commodification of psychedelics
• tokenistic representation of Indigenous people
• anthropology and the role of social science in understanding psychedelics
• building partnerships and the importance of unlearning
• why cultivating diversity of perspectives is so essential

Bia Labate is one of many experts on Onaya's 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme, where we're currently offering a special 25% discount until Monday 2nd December. To enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'AFONAYA25'.

With challenges to the so-called psychedelic renaissance, do we now need a ‘psychedelic enlightenment’ that changes not just ourselves, but our culture?

Alexander Beiner is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream.

Last year, Ali published a bestselling book, The Bigger Picture: How Psychedelics Can Help Us Make Sense of the World (2023), and now writes a popular Substack with the same name.

He is an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture, and he was also one of the founders of Rebel Wisdom, a popular alternative media platform that explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking.

This episode focused on how we might use psychedelics in the effort to fix our systems and change our cultures, exploring: 

• Ali's background and early fascination with altered states
• Crisis, meta-crisis, and the need for systems change
• ‘E-Cognition’ and cultural frameworks that shape our thinking
• The problem of false insights under psychedelics
• The need for discernment and collective interpretation
• 'Saving the world’ vs changing culture
• Artificial intelligence and the prospects of an animist revival
• AI interactions as entity encounters
• Shipibo perspectives on progress and technology

Ali Beiner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.