Lying on a picnic blanket in the woods under a summer sky, we ask: how does a mushroom, when eaten, cause us to feel love and connection with nature?

Homeless man David tells me about his mom, and how the world is waking up and everything is getting better.

Ross Ulbricht created the first anonymous dark web marketplace Silk Road where drugs and other items were traded for bitcoin, and was arrested and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years in maximum-security prison without parole.I have a personal conversation with Ross' mother Lyn about her experience of Ross' trial, her views on US amendment violations, digital snooping, prisons and the drug war. She shares lessons from her long road of activism, then we talk about Ross the person: his upbringing, his philosophies, affinity for eastern spirituality and meditation, and how he has been doing in prison.

Ross Ulbricht created the first anonymous dark web marketplace Silk Road where drugs and other items were traded for bitcoin, and was arrested and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years in maximum-security prison without parole.Here Ross' mother Lyn gives a talk that I organized at the University of Texas at Austin, presenting her view on the case of Ross and Silk Road.

This is a brief guided vipassana (breath/mindfulness) meditation practice.

My physics PhD friend Stefan Eccles discusses recent criticisms by prominent physicist blogger Sabine Hossenfelder, that large experiments like the LHC are not motivated well enough (by theories such as 'naturalness'), so we should not fund them.

We discuss harm reduction from drugs (also using meditation), the war on drugs, and today’s psychedelics movement. Then we discuss the connection between psychedelics and the body. We end with talking about transpersonal (out-of-body/space/time) experiences on psychedelics, and I poll them on their religious views.

Jordon shares his painful religious upbringing, and eventual spiritual and psychedelic experiences. Carol talks about growing up as a dreamy loner in a fractured family, being exorcised for having visions of the future, and how psychedelics completely transformed her pain from arthritis and opiate withdrawal.

Carol Gilson and Jordon Stanford tell us how they do psychotherapy with the help of the ketamine molecule. We talk about ketamine, its effects, how it helps therapy, its legal status, risks, abuse potential and irresponsible use by clinics. Then we talk about the therapy sessions: how they get the clients, the issues they treat, a typical session and the therapy methods they use, set and setting, and risks of such therapy.

সত্তরের দশকে কলকাতার যুবক-যুবতীরা যে মাওবাদী রাজনৈতিক বিপ্লবে শামিল হয়েছিল, তার খেসারত হিসেবে প্রশাসন ও পুলিশের হাতে অকথ্য গ্রেফতার, অত্যাচার ও হত্যার শিকার হয়েছিল। আজকের পর্বটি আমার বাবা বিশ্ববন্ধু দাসের দেখা সত্তরের কলকাতার সেই ভয়ানক বিপ্লবের ইতিহাস, বাবারই লেখা ও পাঠ করা।