Brian Muraresku is the author of the new book The Immortality Key, currently the #10 audiobook on the NYT Best Seller list and the #9 hardcover on Amazon’s non-fiction list. A collection of reviews can be found on Brian’s website. My own review is here. The Immortality Key, his first book, examines the pivotal role that psychedelics may have played in the origins of Western civilization, first among the ancient Greeks and then early Christians.

This is not some kooky-ass book from some hippie who has decided that Jesus was tripping. It is a book of rigorous scholarship, textual analysis, botanical chemistry — you name it — all the skills of modern science to try to understand something that humans have always understood and has been part of humanity forever. I cannot recommend this book enough. And we had a wonderful conversation.

(You can listen right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed, allowing all future episodes to come right to your smartphone. If you want to first listen to a four-minute teaser of Brian’s episode, go here.)

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Coleman Hughes is a brilliant young writer at Quillette on issues related to race, a contributing editor at City Journal, and the host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman. He famously faced off against Ta-Nehisi Coates at a congressional hearing on reparations.

In this episode, I begin by wondering what I got wrong about Trump and how the electorate actually views him. We discuss what kind of authoritarian he actually turned out to be, how woke overreach cost the Democrats big this year, and how vulnerable a president Biden could be to the pressures of the identitarian left. After I go off on a rant about “LGBTQ+”, and Coleman, who is half Puerto Rican, tackles the “Latinx” idiocy, we do a deep dive into the philosophical implications of wokeness.

(You can listen right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed, allowing all future episodes to come right to your smartphone.)

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Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, New York Times best-selling author, host of the Making Sense podcast, and creator of the Waking Up App. He’s also an old friend, jousting partner, meditation role model, and all round wonderful man. In thinking who might be an ideal first guest for the first Dishcast, and on the eve of an election, Sam came up immediately. Exactly four years ago, in an episode of his podcast titled “The Lesser Evil”, we had a rambling discussion that went viral, where we confessed how deeply we loathed Hillary Clinton and how vital nonetheless it was to vote for her against the far greater menace of Donald J Trump.

In this episode — the inaugural episode of The Dishcast — Sam and I pick up the conversation from 2016 by delving deeper into the incomprehensibly foul nature of Trump and the inability of his cult followers to care, and the danger of woke authoritarianism in the wake of Trump. I hope you have as much fun listening as we did chatting.

(You can listen right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed, allowing all future episodes to come right to your smartphone.)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe