Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Boundary-dissolving internal hierophany does in fact reliably occur in the presence of these [psychedelic] plants and compounds.” “We have become so accustomed to seeking the answer that even as a community we have a lot of trouble figuring out how you just fact the answer, how you come to terms with the options that are actually available.” “It is not only possible, but millions and millions of people ...
Nov 30, 2015•1 hr 22 min
Guest speaker: Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Shonagh Home.] “The mushroom has a wildness to it because it is wild, just as our minds once were wild.” “I see the mushroom as the ultimate test of the initiate because you're on your own. There's no shaman to guide you, and so it is up to you to determine how this [experience] is about to look.” “What is the point of doing these medicines if you are not going to break the spell of your perceptions, of who and what you thin...
Nov 24, 2015•1 hr 5 min
Guest speaker: Hamilton Souther PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Hamilton Souther.] “In the jungle, the ayahuasca is used traditionally to heal what are known as mystical, non-ordinary, problems.” “I came to look at it and realize that what we [North Americans] were looking for wasn't specifically an experience that would produce healing, but we were looking for a shift in consciousness that would produce healing.” “We are self-regulating, universal beings.” “There can be negative eff...
Nov 16, 2015•1 hr 7 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today we pick up on the February 1996 Terence McKenna workshop that we began with Podcast 472. When he gets to his overview of habit and novelty and then moves into a discussion of time, his poetic language provides several interesting mental footholds from which we can expand on some of his thinking about the topic of time. As he says, “We are very naieve about the nature of time,” pointing out that the concept of using an average of measurements ta...
Nov 10, 2015•1 hr 15 min
Guest speakers: Borka Cafuk & Shonagh Home Today's program features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Borka Cafuk, who is a remarkable medicine woman. Not only does Borka provide interesting details about plant medicines such as ayahuasca, sapo, and nu-nu, she also tells the fascinating story of her transition from working as an environmental journalist from Europe into a South American medicine woman. And she minces no words in talking about the difficulties that she has encountered b...
Nov 02, 2015•1 hr 16 min
Guest speaker: Cory Doctorow cory (at) eff (dot) org PROGRAM NOTES: Update! October 27, 2015 Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses Today's podcast features a 2015 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Cory Doctorow at this year's Burning Man Festival. Cory is a well-known science fiction writer and lecturer who warns us about how much of our freedom has already been assumed by rich corporations through their manipulation of the law through the use of tec...
Oct 27, 2015•1 hr 6 min
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “We deliberately keep kids dumb by treating them like kids.” “We all know that if voting would change anything it would be illegal.” “The future belongs to those who can see the future.” “The smarter you are, the higher you want to be.” “The key to the Sixties, as we see it now, was a period of self-discovery, of self-indulgence, and the refusal to accept the adult hive's over-specialized models.” “Show me a...
Oct 19, 2015•58 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “An interesting thing about drugs is often, when a new drug is discovered, it takes a long time to figure out how do you do it.” “In 1948, television was introduced, and millions and millions of people lead larval, low-awareness, warehoused lives mainlining an electronic drug straight into their brains.” “I would argue that it's almost better to do heroin than to watch TV. At least when you're doing hero...
Oct 13, 2015•1 hr 27 min
Guest speakers: Janine Sagert, Saj Razvi, Ryan LeCompte, & Shonagh Home FROM SHOCK TO AWE (Indiegogo Campaign) /* Click image to see video From Shock to Awe is a feature-length documentary that will chronicle the journeys of military veterans as they seek relief from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with the help of ayahuasca, MDMA (“Ecstasy”), and cannabis. It will be an intimate look at how these substances can be used to heal our wounded warriors—and, by extension, their loved ones. Our int...
Oct 05, 2015•1 hr 44 min
Guest speaker: Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature Shonagh Home from a talk that she gave at the recent Women & Entheogens Conference that was held in Cleveland, Ohio. The focus of Shonagh's presentation has to do with breaking the spell of our cultural constructs that are preventing us from living informed and satisfying lives. She begins with an excellent overview of how, over the centuries, the ruling elite have conditioned society in ways that keep most of us from being truly fr...
Sep 28, 2015•54 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We don’t produce enough seritonin for living above 20 degrees latitude.” “I’m not a big advocate of mixing drugs, anyway. If you really want to get out into unknown territory, where there is the potential for danger, then start pouring these things together.” “It’s a funny thing the way people relate to drugs. Many people take them in environments that couldn’t be better designed to suppress the effect ...
Sep 21, 2015•1 hr 37 min
Guest speaker: Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: “I have never gone to bed in Peru without having learned something new that day.” -Peter Gorman Today’s podcast features the second part of an interview with Peter Gorman, one of the larger-than-life figures to be found among our psychedelic elders. The program begins by picking up with a story about river pirates in the Amazon, migrates to tales of running a bar in the jungle town of Iquitos, Peru that was frequented by DEA agents, and continues with P...
Sep 14, 2015•1 hr 34 min
Guest speaker: Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: Today’s podcast features an interview of Peter Groman by Tom Huckabee. The interview took place at Peter’s home in August 2015. In this, the first part of Peter’s story, we learn that Peter was one of the first American’s to take ayahuasca. At the time, Burroughs’ “Yage Letters” hadn’t yet made it around to him. He wrote a freelance story about the experience, which became a front page story in High Times Magazine. Many twists and turns later, Peter bec...
Sep 08, 2015•1 hr 8 min
Guest speaker: Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Rick Doblin.] “When we take a psychedelic drug and material emerges from our unconscious . . . it’s not a psychedelic experience, it’s a human experience that psychedelics have catalyzed.” “One of the most successful exports of the United States is the drug war.” “Mescaline is the most important psychedelic drug that is not being researched.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Multi...
Sep 04, 2015•1 hr 6 min
Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Dr. Bruce Damer in May 2015 at the Lightening in a Bottle Festival. Building on a theme introduced by Lorenzo in a talk at Esalen, Bruce takes an in-depth look at the importance and essence of the Mysteries at Eleusis. In his concluding remarks, Lorenzo discusses the drawbacks of organized religion and suggests that minor children NOT be given religious instruction. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Ma...
Aug 18, 2015
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I describe myself as a tall man with a cheap watch.” “If reality is code, then it can be hacked in some way that we had not suspected before.” “In a sense, the Italian Renaissance IS the medieval lead turned to the secular gold of reform and rebirth.” “You aren't an object. You're a process of some sort.” “What foods are, essentially, are idea-neutral drugs.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select optio...
Aug 10, 2015
Guest speakers: Ashley Booth and Amy Ralston Povah Today's podcast features Ashley Booth, scientist and psychedelic advocate, and Amy Ralston Povah, a victim and hero of the War on Drugs. The talk by Ashley was given at the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures at the Burning Man Festival, and the talk by Amy was given at a Venice, California salon hosted by Ashley in celebration of Bicycle Day 2014. Together these talks will give you a lot of things to talk about, both with friends who agree with you an...
Aug 03, 2015
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “In hyperspace nothing is hidden.” “Culture is a narrowing.” “We're about to have the chance to create a global culture, to essentially clean our basement and decide what we're going to save and what we're going to keep.” “It's the monotheistic religions that have to take a knock for the present situation.” “The thing that I go back to over and over again, and that makes psychedelics different, and that ...
Jul 27, 2015
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Language is the software without which we wouldn't be people.” “Culture is a strategy for intensifying the dimensionality of an animal species.” “Somehow, the psychedelic experience is related to this bootstrapping process of climbing, organizationally, from one dimension to another, deeper and deeper into complexity. It's almost as though the psychedelic experience is a viewing of the process from the highest dimensi...
Jul 21, 2015
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The most politically potent thing you can do for somebody is to educate them, to give them the facts. The facts are now so horrifying, and the means of delivering the facts so effective that there is no excuse for everyone not beginning to act in an informed manner.” “How can we go to the place where ideas come from?” “We are to life what life is to the inorganic realm.” “I think psychedelics are cataly...
Jul 13, 2015
We were saddened to learn that Kai left this life on February 6th, 2016 due to complications from a fast. She was on the 37th day of a 40 day fast. Guest speakers: Kai Wingo & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: A mushroom expert, Kai Wingo's passion is highlighting the value of mushroom cultivation in the revitalizing of community. She is a mother, mycologist and lecturer on a quest to inspire reverence for earth's exploratory treasures and in the utilization of their technology and curative abilit...
Jul 06, 2015
Guest speaker: Rak Razam PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Rak Razam this year at Byron Bay, Australia. Rak is an ‘experiential’ journalist, who writes about the emergence of a new cultural paradigm in the 21st century. Rak is the author of the critically acclaimed book Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey and the companion volume of interviews, The Ayahuasca Sessions. In this podcast he discusses the Gaian process underway spearheaded by ayahuasca and other plant entheogens ...
Jun 30, 2015
Guest speaker: Mikey Siegel PROGRAM NOTES: “Technology is a manifestation of mind.” Mikey Siegel, Consciousness Hacker Have you ever given any thought to the proposition that perhaps human well-being, or enlightenment, may be approached through engineering? In today's podcast, which is the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Mikey Siegel, you are going to learn not only about the possibilities of such a thing as engineering enlightenment, you are also going to learn about the rapid advances tha...
Jun 23, 2015
Guest speakers: Annie Oak, Irina Alexander, and Bruce Damer "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys"By James Fadiman PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a panel discussion about some of the difficulties that can be encountered during a psychedelic experience. This panel discussion took place at the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures at the Burning Man Festival and features Annie Oak, Irina Alexander and Bruce Damer. In addition to the featured speakers, several me...
Jun 15, 2015
Guest speaker: Aldous Huxley PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast celebrates the ten year anniversary of programming from the Psychedelic Salon. And so we return to one of the men who was responsible for igniting today's psychedelic renaissance, Aldous Huxley. The talk featured here was delivered at MIT in 1961, sometime after it was first given at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. The Medical Center version of this talk has been credited with giving Dick Price the inspiration...
Jun 10, 2015
Guest speakers: George Greer, John Gilmore, Rick Doblin, Annie Oak PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the tributes to Sasha Shulgin that were made at the Palenque Norte lectures during the 2014 Burning Man Festival. In addition to comments from the audience, we hear from Dr. George Greer (MDMA Researcher and Co-founder of the Heffter Research Institute), Rick Doblin PhD (President of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), John Gilmore (Co-founder of the Electronic Front...
Jun 09, 2015•1 hr 8 min
Guest speakers: Ginny Rutherford & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features an interview of Ginny Rutherford by Shonagh Home. Ginny is a Certified Transformational Life Coach in the Seattle area. She has studied Alchemical Tarot for the past 5 years and uses the Tarot in her coaching to get insight for her clients and information on their next step. She has spent time in the jungle of Peru participating in the Shamanic ceremonies using Ayahausca. She also uses Amazonian Kambo, Sa...
Jun 01, 2015•1 hr 20 min
Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture delivered by Daniel Pinchbeck. Beginning with a discussion of his experimentation with toad venom (primary active ingredient 5MEO-DMT), his interaction with the audience leads down many of the different roads that Daniel has traveled as he was gathering information for his books Breaking Open the Head, and 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Daniel is also the co-founder of RealitySandwich.com, T...
May 26, 2015•1 hr 1 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “These psychedelics, which in the Sixties and Fifties were simply called consciousness expanding drugs, a good old phenomenological description, if there is an iota of possibility that they expand consciousness then we must put out attention on this area. Because it is the absence of consciousness that is making our situation so very uncomfortable.” “Where spiritual advancement is discussed, I want psych...
May 18, 2015•1 hr 23 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: In this continuation of a Terence McKenna workshop from June 1994, he does brief riffs about Joyce's “Finnegan's Wake” and Orwell's “1984”. He then continues with some speculations about what he thought 2012 would bring. Step 1, he speculated, would be that everyone in the world would go outdoors and get naked. And from there he takes off on a wild flight of mind that you have to hear for yourself to truly appreciate his relationship (at that time) t...
May 11, 2015•50 min
