In “even-a-broken-clock …” news this week, Donald Trump did something I applaud. He signed an executive order to accelerate research and access to psychedelic drugs for medical use, particularly to treat serious mental illness. Psychedelic substances have been used for ceremony and as medicine for millennia. Such properties were being cultivated and studied in the US in the 1960s and early ‘70s till widespread and careless use of psychedelics – think Timothy Leary –  and sensational media reports produced a backlash. Here’s my 2012 episode in which I talk first with CHARLES GROB MD about the scientific research, including his own ground-breaking studies. And then with JAMES FADIMAN about the ideas, the vision, and the advice in his book, PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys.

When tech billionaires make nice with authoritarians and AI challenges are everywhere, I check in with JONATHAN TAPLIN, Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, a former tour manager for Bob Dylan & The Band, a producer of films including Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS, and the author of MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy and THE END OF REALITY: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. We talk about the relationships of AI, democracy, authoritarianism, inequality, billionaires, the arts, and the military. You can learn more at jontaplin.com

Let’s get down to basics. Does your life have a purpose? Can you justify your existence? I talk with REBECCA GOLDSTEIN, philosopher, novelist, and MacArthur Fellow, about THE MATTERING INSTINCT: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. Goldstein asserts we are “creatures of matter who long to matter” – physical beings governed by the laws of nature, yet obsessed with our own significance. She and I talk about the implications of this perspective on our understanding of what it means to be human, and about how we can put this understanding to use to help us turn things around in this challenging time of tribalism and social and political regression. Learn more at rebeccagoldstein.com/

 

To remind us what has to heal to put MAGA behind us, here’s my 2020 conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning husband-wife team, NICHOLAS KRISTOF & SHERYL WuDUNN. Their book, TIGHTROPE, tells how Nick’s childhood home – Yamhill, Oregon – was devastated by the loss of well-paying jobs and policy failures in education, healthcare, and justice that led to his childhood friends’ deaths of despair – and how we can end this crisis. We recorded this episode in the final year of Trump’s first term, a few weeks before the pandemic exploded.