Luminous: A Podcast about the Science, Philosophy and Culture of Psychedelics

We all know Timothy Leary, the high priest of ‘60s psychedelia, but his partner, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, has largely been forgotten. She also had a remarkable life, even breaking Leary out of prison with the help of the Weather Underground. Now, biographer Susannah Cahalan tells her story — from the heady Sixties to a life on the run for decades.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:05:40 Before Timothy Leary
00:10:40 Millbrook
00:20:00 Prison Break and Exile
00:36:00 Twenty Years as an Innkeeper

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Thomas Metzinger is a renowned German philosopher. He has a longtime fascination with psychedelics, stemming from his own experience and also from his work as an analytic philosopher. He says altered states of consciousness give us profound insights into the nature of the mind. And he believes modern society has an ethical imperative to foster a “culture of consciousness.”

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:10 Is There Knowledge in These States
00:06:55 Metzinger's Own Experiences
00:19:45 When It Backfires
00:28:15 A Concrete Proposal

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• Bio: Thomas Metzinger

Most psychedelic stories are highly personal, but there’s a different dynamic when two people share the experience — especially a married couple. Steve talks with theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser and clinical psychologist Kari Gleiser about their transformative experiences.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:08:45 A Physicist's First Journey
00:17:30 Reattaching Mind and Body
00:26:15 Kari's Clinical Practice
00:44:00 What a Shared Trip Opens Up

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Chris Timmerman is a neuroscientist with a deep interest in phenomenology—what’s actually happening in our minds during psychedelic experiences. He leads the DMT Research Group at Imperial College, where he’s found that a single psychedelic experience can transform a person’s belief system, often turning materialists into panpsychists. In this wide-ranging conversation, Steve talks with Chris about everything from fractals and ayahuasca ceremonies to whether scientists who study psychedelics should talk openly about their own experiences.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:40 Why Study Non-Ordinary States
00:16:05 What DMT Does to the Brain
00:29:15 Entities and Scientific Caution
00:49:40 The Questions Still Open

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• Bio: Chris Timmermann

Buddhist meditation and psychedelic journeys have a lot of shared DNA—both take you deep inside your mind and can change your life. But many Buddhists say psychedelics violate the prohibition against intoxicants. Do they? Spring Washam straddles this divide as both a Buddhist teacher and founder of an ayahuasca church. Her own story is fascinating—how she’s merged these two practices.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:30 Finding Buddhism in Oakland
00:12:55 When the Boat Cracked
00:25:10 Two Traditions, Both True
00:42:05 A Church in Georgia

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• Bio: Spring Washam

There’s a huge question swirling around the really big psychedelic experiences. Are these mind-blowing trips just hallucinations – the brain shot full of chemicals, playing tricks on you - or do they crack open some transpersonal dimension of consciousness? Most scholars who study psychedelics won’t go anywhere near this question, and yet it’s central to how you interpret these experiences. If you’re in psychedelic-assisted therapy, you want to know if this glimpse of the divine was real or just some figment of your imagination. Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes believes we need a metaphysics of psychedelics to explain these powerful experiences.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:04:05 A Metaphysics of Psychedelics
00:19:55 The Comforting Delusion Objection
00:29:15 Problems with the MEQ

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• Bio: Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

“Psychedelic people are practicing at the very edge of anyone else’s comfort zone,” says psychologist Katherine MacLean, author of the psychedelic memoir “Midnight Water.” MacLean was a pioneering psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins, who then left her job to pursue her own unconventional psychedelic journey. She talks with Steve Paulson about her work as a psychedelic guide, her personal history with psychoactive substances, and why she reveres the Mexican healer Maria Sabina.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:20 Recovering Maria Sabina
00:14:05 Dartmouth to Johns Hopkins
00:23:05 When the Trips Got Harder
00:42:10 A Vigil for Her Father

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• Bio: Katherine MacLean

Erik Davis’ “Blotter” is really three books in one: It’s about the way LSD tabs were embedded in blotter paper so they wouldn’t be detected by the authorities; it’s also a deep dive into the psychedelic underground; and finally, it’s an art book — gorgeously illustrated, with lots of very trippy blotter art. Steve talks with Erik about the wildness of psychedelic experiences and whether they reveal a deeper dimension of consciousness.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:05 What Blotter Actually Is
00:12:25 Acid Art and Underground Media
00:18:25 In Defense of Recreation
00:30:30 High Weirdness and Reality

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• Bio: Erik Davis

Brian Muraresku makes the controversial argument that the famous Eleusinian Mysteries were fueled by a psychedelic wine. And he speculates that this secret ceremony, with its mind-altering drugs, became the Eucharist — the foundational event of early Christianity.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:35 A Catholic Who Won't Partake
00:09:50 The Mysteries at Eleusis
00:23:30 Kykeon, Ergot and the Evidence
00:29:30 The Eucharist and the Vatican

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• Bio: Brian Muraresku

It’s remarkable how fast psychedelics have gone mainstream. Just look at how so many major universities are racing to set up their own psychedelic institutes. Psilocybin and MDMA are now considered the most promising treatments for depression and PTSD that we’ve had in decades. But this is not the first time psychoactive drugs were hailed as miracle cures. Heroin and cocaine were also once considered wonder drugs. Today, what’s so striking is how the public conversation about psychedelics ignores this deeper history of intoxicants.

British historian Mike Jay wants to challenge this narrative of psychedelic “exceptionalism.” In his book “Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind,” he digs into the 19th century’s rich history of psychoactive experiences — and tells the story of seminal figures like Humphry Davy, Sigmund Freud and William James – and lots of other people I’d never heard of.

Jay is also upfront about his own psychedelic experiences. He’s had plenty of them. And he believes the scientists and doctors who study psychedelics should talk more openly about their own mind-altering experiences — which is definitely not the case for most of them.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:08:05 The First Psychonauts
00:20:25 Freud, Cocaine and Ambition
00:28:35 William James on Nitrous Oxide
00:38:45 What You Bring Back

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