Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Dennis McKenna & Lex Pelger

Dennis McKennaPsychedelic Researcher

PROGRAM NOTES:

Lex talks with Dennis McKenna about the upcoming ESPD50 conference: the Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs 50th Anniversary Symposium

Lex also announces Psymposia's first sale on Patreon & asks for your help to keep bringing people together online & offline. Perks include hemp Psymposia shirts, blotter art & print editions from Lex's graphic novel series on the cannabinoids.

Psymposia's contributions to the Psychedelic Salon 2.0 are hosted by Lex Pelger, engineered by Matt Payne, intro music made by Joey Whipp, outro music played by California Smile & this episode is produced by Brian Normand.

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This program has been deleted by request of the speakers.

Guest speaker: Brad Burge

Psymposia at Psychedelic Science 2017

PROGRAM NOTES:

Today's podcast features Brad Burge, the director of communications for MAPS, who tells us more about the upcoming 6-day conference in Oakland, CA: Psychedelic Science 2017.

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In the "Free Marketplace" at Psychedelic Science 2017 Psymposia will be hosting our stage ten hours a day. You can see the schedule and watch the livestream here.

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Today’s podcast is hosted by Lex Pelger, engineered by Matt Payne, intro music by Joey Whipp, outro music by California Smile, produced by Brian Normand.

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If you like this show, want to see more, or want to help Lex get a new mic, consider supporting the Psymposia Team monthly on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/psymposia

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Guest speakers: Adi Khavous, Jenifer Dumpert, Brett Greene, and Pol Cosineau

PROGRAM NOTES:

Date this lecture was recorded: 920 Psilocybin Mushroom Day 2015

This week you’ll hear stories recorded live at Psymposia Stories Montreal from 920 Psilocybin Mushroom Day 2015.

Adi Khavous: A nomadic street artist’s first time taking mushrooms.

Jenifer Dumpert: One dream researcher’s story about Santa, drugs, and elves.

Brett Greene: A howling tale of a Jeremiah in the wilderness kind of head trip.

Pol Cosineau: The life changing drug experience of a man who well prepared himself for the voyage.

Today's program is hosted by Lex Pelger, engineered by Matt Payne, intro music by Joey Whipp, outro music by California Smile, produced by Brian Normand.

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If you like this show, want to see more, or want to help Lex get a new mic, consider supporting the Psymposia Team monthly on Patreon.

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The-Blue Dot Tour

To find more about the tour and if we’re visiting your city: https://www.psymposia.com/bluedottour

The Blue-Dot Tour is our two-month open-mic Psychedelic Stories road trip across the continent starting on the way to the Psymposia Stage Psychedelic Science 2017 in Oakland.

Our goal is to hit blue cities in red states that serve as such pressure cookers of activism, education, and art. But also blue cities in blue states, red towns in red states, purple villages in green states, and anywhere we can find a host from Mexico to Canada.

We’ll also be screening Robert Barnhart's film 'A New Understanding - the Science of Psilocybin.'

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Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

Alex Grey painting in his Manhattan studio Photo credit: Bill Radacinski

PROGRAM NOTES:

Date this lecture was recorded: August 7, 1998

Today's podcast continues with a series of lectures given by Terence McKenna at the Esalen Institute in early August 1998. It begins with Terence discussing ways in which he sees art evolving. Eventually he transitions into a discussion about the growth of the Internet and the possibility of it becoming a super intelligent entity of some kind. Along the way he touches on science fiction, time, consciousness, Bell's Theorem, and complex systems.

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Guest speaker: Ayelet Waldman

PROGRAM NOTES:

Today brings us the first of the Salon2 podcasts, and it is hosted by Lex Pelger, who I have asked to tell you a little about what his psychedelic clan is up to. After Lex's introduction of the Psymposia Team, he will be interviewing Ayelet Waldman about her new book titled "A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life".

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Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

A Sequel to DreamLand

PROGRAM NOTES:

Date this lecture was recorded: August 6, 1998

Today's podcast features an August 6, 1998 talk about Salvia Divinorum given by Terence McKenna at the Esalen Institute. In addition to many interesting facts that Terence presents about Salvia, he tells how Daniel Siebert became the first person to identify the active ingredient of the plant, which eventually led to its widespread use today. In addition to discussing Salvia, Terence also touches on: Ibogaine, magic mushrooms, psychedelic plants, Australia's psychoactive plants, DMT, Greek mystery religions, Datura, LSD, War on Drugs, and language.

"I've not done the pure [salvinorin A] compound. It's somewhat scary. One thing that's scary about it is it creates a profound break with reality. The person who is intoxicated totally loses touch with this world, and unlike people on DMT, or ketamine, or some other short-acting psychoactive or dissociative, they won't stay still. People tend to move around and be active, which is a real pain for the sitter. . . . The protocol for dealing with this is the 'tie 'em to a tree' protocol." -Terence McKenna

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U.S. State Laws regarding Salvia Divinorum

Legal status of Salvia Divinorum worldwide

Guest speaker: Lorenzo

PROGRAM NOTES:

This is the first of the Psychedelic Salon 2.0 podcasts. It is a very short program that answers the following questions:

1. How did the idea of Salon 2.0 come about?

2. Where did the ideas for how Salon2 will work come from?

3. How much input and control will Lorenzo have in selecting the new programs?

4. How do you provide feedback as to format (lectures, interviews, conversations), etc.

5. Psymposia's Blue-Dot tour

Psymposia Blue-Dot Tour Information

Currently Scheduled Cities

4/06/17 Boston, MA

4/07/17 Philadelphia, PA

4/08/17 Lancaster, PA

4/09/17 Baltimore, MD

4/11/17 Athens, GA

4/13/17 Austin, TX

4/15/17 Boulder, CO

4/21-23/17 Psychedelic Science in Oakland, CA

4/26/17 Los Angeles, CA

4/27/17 San Diego, CA

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Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

Date this lecture was recorded: August 4,1998

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna

"The nation state is now on the ropes. It's being replaced by something else, the world's one thousand companies, the world corporate state."

"The interesting thing about the world corporate state is it has no real moral agenda. It only wants to pick your pocket, which when you think of what's been peddled in the ideological market place in the 20th Century, somebody who only wants to pick your pocket is a welcome and humane addition to the rogues gallery. So I think that fairly quickly, more and more drugs will be legalized and even drug taking encouraged because there's a great deal of money to be made."

"So all of these things [adverse reactions to drugs] should just be treated as neurotic responses to the problem of being, and if people want therapy or anti-depressants, or whatever they want to get over this hump should be given to them. But to criminalize this is not to do any favor to the victims. It's simply to turn it into a racket for all kinds of underworld and marginal institutions."

"What all these things [psychedelic substances] have in common is that without any great danger to body and mind they produce a profound transformation of consciousness, the processing of language, the way in which we model the world and relate to the past. And do they impact on cultural conditioning? You bet your booties they do, because what they do, essentially, is return you to some primal, per-cultural state of conditioning where the animal body and the unacculturated inputs of perception are directly experienced. This is a model of the psychedelic experience."

"Is culture good or bad? Well, I'm coming slowly to the conclusion that, I'm not sure it's bad, but it's certainly a damn nuisance. It's a limitation, is what it is."

"The problem is these [world] cultures create less than a full expression of human potential."

"To the degree that we are integrated into our culture we are not ourselves."

"Could we end up spending most of our disposable income on code rather than fabricated steel, aluminum, glass, and plastic?"

"So it's going to be technology, or catastrophe, or fascism. These are the choices, because, of course, because fascism, you know, can just order the liquidation of everybody under five feet, or everybody with brown eyes, or whatever. But the consequences of fascism are the complete distortion and subjugation of the human spirit. When we talk about survival of the human species we're not talking about at-any-cost or under any circumstances. If humanness does not survive with the human species then we're no more than another cannibal ape with a bigger club in the hand."

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Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

Date this lecture was recorded: August 4, 1998

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

"A certain portion of my audience is flakier than I am comfortable with."

"The whole point with psychedelics was to cut through the programming and the cant, and the propaganda of culture to true truth, real reality, not to just initiate an era of intellectual permissiveness where everything in the spiritual marketplace was placed on the same pedestal as Euclidean geometry."

"It offends me that psychedelic people are susceptible to this [New Age thinking], because it seems to me that we're the last people who should be susceptible to this. We have no need of spiritual illusions because we have access to spiritual realities through the substances and the plants. So why should we, least of all why should we, buy in to all these unanchored, wholly, fluffed-headed ideas that are being pushed in the spiritual marketplace?"

"If you're intelligent and you live past forty you will outgrow your culture. Some people may do it sooner, but you have to be a complete idiot to just buy-in at fifty-five, at sixty, at seventy-five. At eighty what are you still going to be doing, expressing homophobic views, voting Republican, and worrying about the A, B, and C's of phony reality? Most people get to a place where they just see it's a bunch of crap."

"It looks to me like ideology is one of these neonatal behaviors that culture downloads on us. In other words, belief is for kids. It's a fairy tale. Marxism is no different than belief in the Easter Bunny. Probability theory is no different than a belief in the Easter Bunny. Everybody needs to get a grip on the uncertainty of the intellectual enterprise."

"So the way to live with a human mind in the world is not to believe things, that's childish. It's undignified. The thing to do is to build models."

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This Week in Psychedelics

with David Wilder