Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: September 1990 [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “It’s really true that the world at any moment could come completely and utterly apart. Have you seen that happen?” “The whole impetus for my career is to convince myself that somebody else has seen […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: September 1990 In today’s talk from a September 1990 workshop, Terence McKenna explains that when speaking about the DMT state he says that what he calls self-dribbling basketballs “are like crystalline, jeweled, semi-see-through, opaque, movemented things, which look like sculptures, but you can tell […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: September 1990 [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “There is no closure. There are models, and there are questions. But all models are provisional, and anybody who says they have answers is highly, highly suspect. Too many people claim answers. What’s being claimed […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I cannot conceive of mature human beings going from the cradle to the grave without ever finding out about [the psychedelic experience]. It’s like not finding out about sex or something. It’s just too weird. It’s a part of our birthright. It’s […]

Guest speaker: Grover Norquist PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Grover Norquist.] “You don’t lose something because of partisan fights at the state level.” “States rights is a stupid concept, since states don’t have rights. People have rights. States have power they use against people.” “People who have concealed carry permits go to jail […]

Guest speaker: Cory Doctorow PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Cory Doctorow.] “This world of computers exists in a principle-free environment. The Internet of Things is the Internet of absolute, self-serving bullshit.” “The Internet of Things needs principles.” “The real struggle here, it’s not making computers free, it’s making people free. The reason we […]

Guest speakers: Annie Oak, Shannon Clare Petitt, and Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: In this 2016 Palenque Norte Lecture, Annie Oak, founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, teaches how to use Naloxone to help a person who has had an opioid overdose. She is followed by Shannon Clare Petitt who tells us about some of the […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What we’re doing is we’re building a nervous system. We’re building a nervous system the size of this planet.” “The marketplace has an appetite for lies about the future.” “I cannot conceive of post eschatonic life. I think of it, just to […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today we get to hear Terence McKenna’s lecture about his TimeWave hypothesis (it never became a true theory). This 1997 talk was given less than three years before Terence’s death and thus represents some of his latest thinking about this topic. He defines the TimeWave as a mathematical model […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “A nature trip is an eyes wide open trip.” “I think LSD is abrasively psychoanalytic.” “I don’t see an intellect outside of space and time guiding things, and certainly not watching with baited breath the machinations of the human monkeys. I mean, […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The only path in to the supernormal that I’ve found are the psychedelics. Everywhere else I found chicanery and fraud.” “It’s fun to be a free person. It’s fun to not depend upon an institution, an ideology, an other person, a place, […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The real news is no one is in control, not the central bank, not the Jews, not the communist party, not the pope. Nobody’s in control.” “I do not understand why people transfer loyalty to role models. You have to be incredibly […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What psychedelics are about is deconditioning all of these culturally induced, sensory biases and idealogical biases, basically it reshuffles the intellectual and sensory deck. And it’s a wonderful, salutary thing to come along for Western culture at this moment because we’re basically […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Democracy is this innate belief in people. It’s a psychedelic way of doing it. It’s the closest we can get to anarchy. Anarchy to my mind is, of course, the ideal. But anarchy has to be mediated with policy, and the way […]

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The thing about [ayahuasca] is that you always come out of it in great shape. Ken’s right, you feel better the day after than if you hadn’t done it. What [other] drug can you say that of?” “I think this ayahuasca thing […]

Guest speakers: Ellen Brown, Letitia Pepper, & Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features insights from Ellen Brown and Latitia Pepper in regards to California’s upcoming ballot measure Proposition 64. As you will hear, this measure will eliminate the current medical marijuana laws in the state. And while anyone over the age of 21 will be […]

Guest speaker: Erik Davis PROGRAM NOTES: “The whole history of Buddhism in the West, the whole thing in the post war period as Buddhism starts to become really popular, is inextricable from psychedelics.” -Erik Davis Today’s podcast features a talk that was given by Erik Davis in which he unravels the history of both the […]

Guest speaker: Professor David Nutt PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features the 2016 talk that Professor David Nutt gave at the annual Glastonbury Festival. His topic was “Do psychedelics matter?”. Although demonised, and attracting severe criminal penalties for users during the half century of the “war on drugs”, psychedelics are now undergoing a renaissance – both […]

Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott PROGRAM NOTES: In today’s podcast Jonathan Ott unfolds a parade of history setting out the use and prohibition of psychedelic medicines throughout the course of human history. Although this talk was originally given at a 1996 entheobotany conference, it remains as current as if it were given yesterday. After Jonathan describes […]

Guest speaker: Michael Garfield PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s program features Michael Garfield who went to school for paleontology and then psychology before leaving academia to embark on a decade-long “trans-disciplinary” independent study of the intersections between art, science, and philosophy. As an experimental acoustic-electronic guitarist-singer-songwriter, as a scientific illustrator turned performance painter, and as a writer […]