Enroll in Vital Psychedelic Training, starting September 17!
Master the art of psychedelic practice

PT364 – Burning Man, Psychedelic Maturity, and Radical Hope

In this episode, David interviews Jamie Wheal: author of the global bestseller, Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work, and most recently, Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In a World That’s Lost Its Mind.

Wheal believes that in our current culture, we’ve over-fetishized our feelings and jumped too often at selfish psychedelic insights and short-term novelty instead of real long-term growth and maturity – that one’s constant search for freedom can become a prison in itself. As such, he founded the Flow Genome Project, an organization dedicated to human performance research and training, with a different attitude than we’re used to seeing: in their words, “ecstasis without the crave,” “catharsis without the cringe,” and “communitas without the cults.” 

He discusses Burning Man and what makes it so life-changing for people; the sliding scale of psychedelics and the need to regularly do a hard reset of our brains; neuroplasticity; his issues with virtual reality; what Hanukkah has to do with psychedelics; eschatothesia; permaculture and sustainability; and radical hope- the belief in an unknown future that one commits to nonetheless, even in the face of certain doom.

Notable Quotes

“Burning Man is, I think, arguably the most potent transformation engine ever assembled on this planet. I don’t think at any point in history have you ever had that many people – 70 to 80 thousand humans – gathered together at one time, all so concretely and coherently in a mind-blown and open state.”

“The relentless pursuit of freedom becomes a prison house of its own. So you’re not free; you’re actually incapable of committing to anything of lasting value, and therefore, because you have nothing of lasting value to ballast yourself or to justify sacrificing or trade offs, you’re forever seeking the new and the novel. And that just becomes a hamster wheel straight into the Hell realms. So I would say that the freedom of no escape, the freedom of finding your hill to die, the place to take your stand is a non-negotiable part of manhood.”

“Most of us are seeking fucking sugar high joy: distractions, diversions, novelties, quick fixes. And that’s the wrong kind of joy. That is not going to work. But deep, true, abiding joy – ‘We’re all dead men walking,’ ‘Today is a good day to die,’ [attitude], like Leonidas and Thermopylae …It’s that level of out-of-fucks, non-bargaining commitment that gets us access to the joy on the other side of all the facts.”

Links

Recapturetherapture.com

Flowgenomeproject.com

Jamie Wheal substack

Burningman.org: Researchers Share First Findings on Burners’ Transformative Experiences

Nature.com: Prosocial correlates of transformative experiences at secular multi-day mass gatherings

Psychedelics Today: Erik Davis – High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by Tim Wu

Wikipedia.org: Eschatology

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear

Goodreads.com: Talmud “Do not be daunted by the enormity…” quote

Psychedelics Today: Wade Davis – Ayahuasca and a New Hope for Colombia

IMDB.com: “The Biggest Little Farm”

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman

Wendell Berry’s “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts” quote


PT363 – Cannabis and Psilocybin: The Complications of Legality Inside an Endless Drug War

In this episode, Joe interviews Reggie Harris: Advisory Board member of Decriminalize Nature and Founder of Oakland Hyphae, which organizes events like the Hyphae Cup (previously the Psilocybin Cup), and performs psilocybin potency testing through Hyphae Labs. 

As Harris is an activist with over a decade of political campaign experience and over a decade in the cannabis industry, this conversation focuses largely on his concerns over the burgeoning psychedelic industry not learning from the mistakes of a failing (at least in California) cannabis industry, as well as one of the key principles of Psychedelics Today: the need to end the drug war immediately and allow the people who got us here to once again live their lives freely. 

He discusses mycology, what a hypha is, and psilocybin potency; how an Eminem song changed his life; why he thinks Oregon is legalizing psilocybin much too quickly; why he thinks we should decriminalize now (and legalize later); the overbearing burden of cannabis industry taxes and how legacy operators are switching to psilocybin; the stories of Kole and Seth Rosenberg; why Mike Tyson is one of the most important influencers in psychedelics; and why “Fuck around and find out” has become a bit of a personal mantra for him and so many others looking to advance our quickly evolving psychedelic space.

Notable Quotes

“I think [that] all we’ve got to do is catch the right politician with drugs, and then the right political parties will start hollering: ‘End the DEA!’ I’m waiting on it. I never thought I’d hear these people start saying ‘Defund the FBI,’ so I think there’s hope.”

“I’d much rather try to hold the wall for a year or two or even five more years and give legacy operators a chance to get their business together, to get their paperwork together, to save up some money, to get their infrastructure together; so that when the wall does come down, they’ve either built something that somebody can buy for a fair price, or they can actually compete. I just want to give people like myself a fair shot at something that they’ve all helped build.”

“I watched a lot of the cultivation decisions being made and crafted and I watched who was making the decisions. I think Oregon is going to be a cautionary tale that the rest of the country uses, again, as to why you don’t want to legalize quickly.”

“You see prices on the street at an all time low, but you still see the people who try to operate within the legalized framework being crushed by being taxed through the nose. You can’t write anything off, you get taxed through the nose, you can’t really bank [any money], you’ve got to pay extra expense because of the nature of your business, and a lot of people make it hard to stand up. It’s funny – as I watch the cannabis industry; in 2018, when they legalized, everybody wanted to play by the rules. Everybody wanted to comply. And so, they cut a lot of the brokers off that they dealt with [and] a lot of relationships were altered because people wanted to go legal. But then when they tried to play around in the legal space for a year, year and a half, and they realized that they were being taxed into oblivion, people opened that back door right on up.”

Links

Oaklandhyphae510.com

Hyphae Labs

Oakland Hyphae Substack

Reggie Harris Linktree

Rollingstone.com: Can Psychedelics and Capitalism Co-Exist? 3 Things I Learned at the Oakland Psychedelic Conference

Biologydictionary.net: Hyphae

Edibleeastbay.com: Mycologist with a Microscope: Alan Rockefeller

Uproxx.com: William Padilla Brown Wants To Save The Planet With Mushrooms

YouTube: Eminem- My Fault

Cannabisni.com: Breckenridge City Colorado Legalizes Marijuana

Psychedelics Today: PT324 – Amanda Reiman, Ph.D., MSW – Web3, NFTs, Cryptocurrencies, and A Deeper Relationship With Plants

Sacrdgardn.com

Occultsentinel.com: OS ep 49 – Kilindi Iyi – The Mushroom and our trans-human future (Joe’s interview with Kilindi Iy from his first podcast)

People.com: Aaron Rodgers Defends Ayahuasca, Says He May Be ‘Called’ to Take the Psychedelic Again

Psychedelicspotlight.com: Will Smith Comes Out of the Psychedelic Closet

Marijuanamoment.net: Dave Chappelle’s Marijuana And Psychedelics Parties Don’t Concern Local Sheriff

NBA.com: NBA Will Not Randomly Test Players For Marijuana Again This Season

Washingtonpost.com: Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year

IMDB.com: We Own The Night

The Cannabis Connection podcast: Dave Hodges- Church of Ambrosia & Zide Door 3/11/2022

Healing-mushrooms.net: Uncle Ben’s Mushroom Tek Guide: Fruiting, Colonization Time & Yield

PT319 – Kole – Activism and Trust: A Cautionary Tale From Someone Who Got Caught

Psychedelics Today: PT351 – Seth Rosenberg – The Trauma In Being Arrested and The Injustice of the Drug War

YouTube: Willy’s World

Psychedelics Today: PT236 – Dr. Carl Hart – Drugs: Honesty, Responsibility, and Logic

Psychedelics Today: PT348 – Steve DeAngelo – Cannabis and Psychedelics: Industry, Consciousness, Justice, and Joy

Edrosenthal.com

Merryjane.com: California Cannabis Growers Are Suing the State Over Legal Loophole for Large Marijuana Farms

Colorado.gov: Natural Medicine Health Act of 2022

Marijuanamoment.net: Colorado Psychedelics Legalization And Psilocybin Therapy Measure Qualifies For November Ballot

Psychedelics Today: Addressing Abuse in Psychedelic Spaces

PT362 – Psychedelic Storytelling: Transforming Out Loud

In this episode, Victoria interviews Cory Firth: Chief Storyteller at the Nikean Foundation, one of the world’s leading charities funding psychedelic research and advancing education.

Rick Doblin has famously said that while the FDA responds to data, it’s stories that most resonate with people, and the current direction of the Nikean Foundation is rooted in that idea – that there is a massive population of “psychedelic seekers” who could likely benefit greatly from the psychedelic experience, but who just need to hear that one special story that inspires them to take the leap towards change. While the efficacy of psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is proven over and over again in study after study, most people don’t connect with that data – it’s the nuance and human connection in personal stories that cut through the “drugs are bad” media bias, and Firth believes that as more people share their transformational tales – who “transform out loud” – society can really change for the better. 

He discusses the value of storytelling in affecting change on multiple levels; the idea of integration as an ongoing practice; the wisdom gained through trauma; and the trust and vulnerability required to be able to share a powerful story. And to practice what they preach, he and Victoria share their own personal stories of healing with the help of psychedelics. We hope they’re stories that someone out there needs to hear.

The Nikean Foundation is aiming to build the largest collection of transformational stories, and they want to hear yours. You can join in by sharing your story at their website, or by sharing the site with a friend. You can submit now, but they officially launch this storytelling project next week, on October 14 at Horizons NYC, where Victoria, Kyle, and David will be! If you haven’t bought a ticket yet, use code PSYCHEDELICSTODAY-NY-17 at checkout to receive 17% off, and when you’re there, come say hello!

Notable Quotes

“Everybody who gets into psychedelics in a transformational way does so because of a friend or a colleague or someone in their family that tells them a story about how they were able to experience them and find some healing potential. …One of the main ways people get into this is through stories. How can we put a little gasoline on that fire and see how it can evolve?”

“You can’t change someone’s mind unless you show them how you changed yours.”

“My goal, eventually, is to have enough stories where someone who’s seeking something can come to the site and see another story of someone who looks like them, in their position – but in the future, where the potential has been reached. They see the potential in themselves. They see the potential of the transformational mechanisms of psychedelics, and they’ve gone through it, and now they see that it’s possible for them.”

Links

Nikean.org: The Nikean Foundation

Psychedelics Today: PT342 – Spencer Hawkswell – The Right to Psilocybin in Canada: TheraPsil’s Charter Challenge

Tim.blog (Tim Ferriss)

Therapsil.ca

Maps.org: MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD

Integration.maps.org: Psychedelic Integration List- Mental Health Support Practitioners by Location

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, by Michael Pollan

Rootstothrive.com

GQ.com: Where the Psychedelic Revolution Is Headed, According to the Guy Who (Arguably) Started It (Rick Doblin’s discussed quote is here)

Therapsil.ca: Psilocybin Therapy Offered Cancer Patient Thomas Hartle More Than He Could Have Asked For

Psychscenehub.com: David Nutt’s Drug Harm Ranking scale.

PT361 – Mycology and Evolutionary Genomics

In this episode, Joe interviews Jason Slot, Ph.D.: Associate Professor of Mycology and Evolutionary Genomics at Ohio State University, and founding member and scientific advisor to the Entheome Foundation, which has the goal of publishing 200+ fungal genomes by 2023 – starting with all the psilocybin-producing species.  

Slot talks about evolutionary genomics and his process: how he looks for interesting gene clusters in the genomes of different fungi to hypothesize what these clusters could be responsible for, how different species interact, and how these genes and species have evolved over time. He discusses the state of mycology in 2022 and the booming interest in functional mushrooms; the regulations around psilocybin and how they all relate to the dispensing of mushrooms; the weirdest things he’s seen in the complicated process of mushroom reproduction; substrate supplementation (with different enzymes, tryptophans, or even DMT); and just how much there still is to discover in the world of mushrooms and other possible plant medicines. 

He also discusses illumina high throughput sequencing; tetrapolar mating systems; Paul Stamets’ P-Value scale and the hayflick limit; mushroom parasexuality; horizontal gene transfer; and a lot of other scientific aspects of the unique studies of a mycologist. If you’re interested in psilocybin-producing mushrooms and want to explore mycology more deeply, this episode serves as a great introduction.

Notable Quotes

“It’s a small field, but I think that it’s growing. I think we have a lot more interest coming in because the growth of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms is just ridiculous. It’s a huge industry in the making.”

“I do crazy evolutionary analyses with all the fungal genomes I can get my hands on, and then find something interesting in the evolutionary history, and then I find an organism that’s got that particular gene or gene cluster that I’m interested in. It gives rise to interesting hypotheses.”

“They’re organisms with their own existences. We tend to think of a mushroom as a tool for therapy, or we think of a mushroom as a product or something like that. But these are organisms with their own rights to exist and thrive as they would.”

Links

Ohio State University: Center for Psychedelic Drug Research & Education

Entheome: The Entheogen Genome Project

Psychedelics Today: Brian Pace and Jason Slot – Neurochemical Ecology, and the Evolution of Psilocybin Mushrooms

Ucdavis.edu: Illumina High Throughput Sequencing

Nanoporetech.com: Nanopore DNA sequencing

Scottsdaleinstitute.org

420dc.com: Penis Envy Mushrooms Review: The Shocking Truth Behind The World’s Most Psychedelic Shroom

Wikipedia.org: Parasexual cycle

Fungi.com (Paul Stamets)

Shroomery.org: Biotransformation of tryptamine derivatives in mycelial cultures of Psilocybe

Wikipedia.org: Horizontal gene transfer

Hostdefense.com: What Is the Stamets P Value® System?

Wikipedia.org: Hayflick limit

Convention on Biological Diversity: About the Nagoya Protocol

PT360 – Kanna: Love and Wholeness Through Nature’s Alternative to MDMA

In this episode, Joe interviews Stephanie Wang: Founder and CEO of KA! Empathogenics, which has created the first-ever empathogenic supplement chew with the primary ingredient of kanna. 

Similar to our exploration of kratom with Oliver Grundmann, Ph.D., this episode dives deep into a plant rarely talked about in psychedelic circles: kanna (or Sceletium tortuosum), a succulent native to South Africa. As a natural serotonin reuptake inhibitor and serotonin releasing agent, kanna’s effects sound very similar to those of MDMA (heart-opening, feeling surrounded by love and wanting to connect, an increase in energy, hunger suppression), but with a lot more: sleep improvement, a decrease in gut inflammation, increased focus and awareness, and a feeling of brain recalibration and true homeostasis (and it’s legal!). KA!’s first product is their kanna chew: a healthy, pH-neutral snack with no sugar, preservatives, caffeine, or artificial sweeteners, made with the intention to “restore full spectrum aliveness for all human beings.” 

Wang breaks down the science behind why kanna works, its history with the Khoisan people of South Africa, her first kanna plant ceremony, contraindications and what pairs well with it, how you should take it and how long it can last, and why she chose KA! as the name for her company. She and Joe also talk about their shared past with Evolver, the complexity in the simple question: “How are you?”, the care needed when making comparisons, society’s move towards self-directed healing and more natural foods, and the question of whether or not every modern culture is truly ready for psychedelics and natural plant medicines.

Notable Quotes

“It was amazing to experience kanna in a ceremonial setting where it was incredibly expansive and heart-opening. That’s literally how it feels: You just feel this oneness and you feel enormous love. You feel everything around you is love, everyone is love. And what it also had an effect on is how we were relating to each other in that setting. So imagine that you’re in a place where nothing matters. Nobody cares what you look like, where you came from, what job you have, how much money you make, what social strata [you’re in]; nobody cares. All you care about is meeting each other in that heart-centered space, in a very human and intimate space.”

“One out of five Americans (at least) suffer from some kind of mental health issue. …[Something] you talk about a lot in your show is this wholeness: we are far more than just our minds. We are bodies, we are hearts, we are spirit as well. So really looking at that as a whole is tremendously important, and kanna is one of those amazing plants that starts to connect you to that understanding.”

“What we look for a lot, in terms of our own healing, is in nature already. And instead of trying to tease out, ‘Okay, here’s the active component and let’s just isolate this, patent this, etc. and then make a drug, and then…’ – that’s, to me, an old model, actually. And what happens is then… the wholeness is lost. …There’s a reason why this particular plant evolved this way and has all these properties.”

Links

Ohmyka.com (KA Empathogenics)

Evolverhealth.com

Thealchemistskitchen.com

Realitysandwich.com

Facebook: Evolver Boston (for a piece of Joe’s history)

Wikipedia.org: Khoisan people

Iamshaman.com: Lost Khoisan Tribe (and kanna usage)

5rhythms.com

Psychedelics Today: The Intertwined Prohibitionist Histories of Psychedelics and Kratom

Vice.com: This Legal Supplement Made Me Roll Like I’d Taken MDMA

NIDA: What are MDMA’s effects on the brain?

Biorxiv.org: Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body

Electricalclassroom.com: What is kA rating?

Trailblazerspresents.com