Program Notes
Guest speakers: Annie Oak, Twilight, and Bruce Damer
Today’s podcast features a panel discussion with Annie Oak, Twilight, and Bruce Damer that took place at the 2012 Palenque Norte Lectures held at that year’s Burning Man Festival.
“Women tend to vote against drug law reforms in greater numbers than men, because they’re worried about their kids. And without the full participation of women [in the movement to reform drug laws] we will not succeed in gaining our civil rights.” -Annie Oak
The Women’s Visionary Congress
Palenque Norte 2013 Speakers
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/1603585044
What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution
By Gar Alperovitz
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space.
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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And I’d like to begin today by thanking those wonderful people who have either purchased a copy of one of my books or who made a direct donation to pay for our web hosting services.
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In fact, while we didn’t quite break even last month,
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the donations that came in during the first part of this month made up the difference.
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So, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
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first part of this month made up the difference, so I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
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And in addition, I want to thank my friend and longtime supporter, John Jay, who somehow learned that things were a little bit tight, and so he sent a check to cover this entire month’s expenses.
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And with that donation, John has now become the largest donor to the salon over the eight years that I have now been podcasting.
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Can you believe that? Eight years!
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In fact, today’s podcast is the first one of our ninth year together.
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And I am so happy that you are still with us.
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We’re all in this together, you know.
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So, if we’re all in this together, you say, why don’t we get better organized?
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Well, maybe some of the ideas put forth in the panel discussion that we are about to hear
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will give you some ideas about how you can do a little community organizing yourself.
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Now, don’t get me wrong, you aren’t going to hear any one, two, three-step solutions.
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Only suggestions about some of the issues that need to be taken
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into account as we continue to grow the worldwide psychedelic community.
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The talk that we are about to listen to was recorded at Burning Man last year, and was
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a panel discussion that was featured as one of the 2012 Planque Norte lectures.
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So let’s listen to that right now. And then I’ll be back with
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probably more things to say than you may want to listen to. But first, let’s travel back to the
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Playa at the 2012 Burning Man Festival and discover what we can learn about building a psychedelic
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community. So I feel incredibly blessed and lucky to have such an amazing crew of speakers here
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in camp with us. It’s pretty remarkable. These are three of my dear friends, Twilight, Annie,
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and Bruce, and they all have extensive experience in building psychedelic communities. So we’re
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going to launch this panel tonight to open up a discussion with you guys about what it means to build psychedelic community and do psychedelics help.
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So the way this will work is that each speaker will have 10 minutes to sort of introduce themselves and make a few statements about psychedelic community.
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And then we’ll open it up to questions from the audience and we’ll turn it into more of a community discussion.
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So does that work for you guys?
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Awesome. Sweet. Well, without further ado, this is Twilight, Annie Oak, and Bruce Dahmer.
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I’ve been talking straight for two hours, so I’m kind of winded. And I’m a junior in this question.
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I haven’t really built any psychedelic community. I just hang around them so I think I’m gonna I’m gonna pass this off to Annie and Twilight to really take this forward and I’ll be on fly on the wall
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and I might have some
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input here and there. Okay thank you Bruce
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My name is Annie Oak I’m a
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I’m a civil rights activist.
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And I believe that the struggle for cognitive liberty,
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the right to change our consciousness,
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is one of the great civil rights struggles of our age.
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I think that this struggle has a lot in common with other civil rights movements, with the movement for
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racial equality, the movement for gay rights, and the movement for gender equality.
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I think that this movement is a struggle because it’s claiming victims,
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just like the other great civil rights struggles of our era.
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People are being arrested.
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People lose their livelihoods, their jobs, their property,
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their children, their reputations.
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And I think that it’s really important for our own community
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to view this as a struggle for our rights. I think that
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the psychedelic community, the community of people who change their consciousness, are
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one of the last oppressed communities to stand up and demand their rights. And I think that
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part of this is creating spaces where we can exchange information and form communities
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creating spaces where we can exchange information and form communities
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and create mutual aid and support
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for each other. I think this can be accomplished
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in lots of different ways.
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Unfortunately, there’s a long history of
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psychedelic communities
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not being really representative communities.
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If we look back at the psychedelic communities of the 1960s,
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of the human being place in the mid-60s,
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which marked the moment when LSD became illegal.
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There were no women up on stage at this enormous event.
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And that has always struck me as something quite strange.
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And that was in 1967.
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Back in 2006, I attended the World Psychedelic Congress, and I was struck by
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the fact that there were 80 men and four women speaking. And I thought, you know, if we’re
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really going to succeed in this civil rights struggle, it has to be a balanced representation of everyone in the community.
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And I think this is especially true because women, for instance,
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tend to vote against drug law reform in greater numbers than men
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because they’re worried about their kids.
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And without the full participation of women in this movement,
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we will not succeed in gaining our civil rights I also think that it’s really important to
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include communities of color who suffer disproportionately in the drug war to
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include the gay and lesbian communities the gay community pioneered medical
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cannabis which has really created a political
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opening for this civil rights struggle. So back in 1967, there was very little balanced
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representation, and I think this is why it’s taken so long for this community to claim its civil rights. In 2007, I founded the Women’s Visionary Congress, which was a group, an event, a community
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of women who got together to talk about their psychedelic experiences, their research, their healing and therapies, their art, their
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activism, and their spiritual path with psychedelics. And we’ve been meeting for the past six years.
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Every year we do regional events around the country. And we don’t exclude men, but we try
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to create balance in the universe because balance and representation, I think,
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is what will make this civil rights struggle succeed.
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So every year we have about 25 women and three men speak at our main event as opposed to
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25 men and three women, and it works.
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You know, we’ve created a community.
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We offer a space for people to tell their stories.
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We create mutual support and mutual aid.
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And we acknowledge ourselves, our true identities.
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We don’t have to hide.
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We can be ourselves.
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We can participate equally in the struggle.
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And we have a lot of fun, and that’s
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a large part of it. So I’m going to pass the mic over to Twilight, and he can elaborate
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on his vision of the psychedelic community. Thank you.
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Thank you, Annie. I came into the psychedelic community a bit differently than others.
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I never came in as a matter of activism or civil rights.
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I leave that to Annie and others.
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I became involved in this community at a rather large festival in the desert
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that may or may not remain nameless throughout this presentation.
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remain nameless throughout this presentation. And particularly that festival in the desert may have some people who are very interested in such
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things and as you know there are lectures and experiential developments
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along those lines. And that community has a tremendous support network for those
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who find themselves in difficulty emotionally, physically, combination thereof.
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Because after all, people going out to the desert, what happens?
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Well, they’re predisposed to emotional challenges because they’re dehydrated,
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because they haven’t eaten enough, because they haven’t slept enough,
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and because they’re overstimulated.
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And under the circumstances, just add camp drama, relationship drama.
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People go out to the desert to try to find themselves,
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and they don’t like what they see.
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Well, that creates a very, very volatile mixture.
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Just add alcohol or substances,
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and some people have very, very big challenges very quickly.
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In coming into this organization, I
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worked on the development and engineering of the program to provide additional support,
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further and better support, continuous quality improvement for the support of those in need,
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those who get themselves in difficult states and need a little help. And I look at what a community is from the outset, and really,
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a community is an integrated support network, tightly interconnected, all sorts of different
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little pieces forming together in an ecosystem to support progress, development, security, safety.
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development, security, safety. Well, in my world, we have the starting point, which is how do you identify those who are in need? What level of need do they have? Okay, look at that as an experience.
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You have people who are in need of just a little bit of rebalancing, get their electrolytes stabilized.
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That’s what the tea house is for, for example, to help rehydrate, slow down, support in a less active way, just helping them through.
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Then you have a more active situation where people are really having difficulty emotionally.
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They may not be entirely connected
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to reality, and they need a lot of grounding and support. What they don’t need is law enforcement
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intervention. What they don’t need is a bunch of people telling them what to do and, you know,
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get over here, so on and so forth. They’re already sufficiently traumatized. They need
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personal attention. They need personal support,
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they need grounding. So in the backdrop of all this, I suddenly found myself working on
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improvements to this very extensive program. And well, what do you do when you’re tasked with
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finding out about something that you really aren’t familiar with, well, you start research.
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You start asking questions of people.
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You find people like Rick Doblin and say,
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hey, you were in charge of this way back when.
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What happened?
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And traveling around the country, interviewing people,
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trying to understand what approaches have been tried,
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both in the United States as well as across the world, to support people in similar circumstances, you meet a couple responses.
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You have the people who are very outgoing, people who are very forward, saying, yes,
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this is a very clear need, and these are some of the approaches that have been tried.
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And you have the other side, which is to say, we don’t
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acknowledge that anything like this ever happens. And whatever might happen in the desert, there are
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no substance problems. There is nothing we can say one way or the other. We are just going to say
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everything is fine and it’s like Disneyland. Well, clearly it’s not like Disneyland. And that sort of mentality really precludes developing a community openly,
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transparently, to the better support of the participants, those most in need.
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So in the research side, you get into very interesting organizations. MAPS is a classic example of something like this,
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where all of a sudden doors open to researchers all around the world,
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absolutely methodically by the book, double blind researchers,
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who are looking at ways that certain of the psychedelic substances can be used
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to the betterment of psychology, to the betterment of
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end-of-life adjustments, to the betterment of ongoing understanding of how the brain works.
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And this was just fascinating to me. It opened up another set of doors, which is the whole field of
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neurosciences. How does a brain work? How do chemicals work? How do substances interact with the brain?
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That was just fascinating. A whole bunch of doors opened up when I started going down to that little adventure.
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And through all of this, there’s an underlying theme.
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you have people who are deeply caring about the exploration of the mind,
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the exploration of how we can improve, and the exploration of how we can better support people who get into difficult circumstances.
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And that really was the key to the community for me,
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because you find this level of intense caring, of intense understanding of those who
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have gotten into difficult states. Many, many people have gotten into difficult states in this
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world. Some of their own volition, some, well, rather suddenly and unexpectedly. That happens
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too, frowned upon. So you have all these people who care deeply about how to advance our understanding
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for support, for caring, for exploration, for understanding, really pushing the frontiers of
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our understanding of how the mind works, how we can support when things go wrong.
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When things go wrong, it can be something like, well, people just suddenly
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discontinue their meds. And if you’re on psychotropic medications and you suddenly
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discontinue them, the brain tends to react rather unfortunately and rather quickly.
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So how do you support people in those crises? Well, okay, that leads to a different medical
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area of exploration. You go to get into the researchers who are working on how do we regulate the brain activity to
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the benefit of the individual.
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Now, everyone’s different.
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Everyone’s physiology is different.
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And it’s a very, very, very challenging subject.
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We know, frankly, still very little about it.
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But we’re learning a lot.
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And we’re learning a lot quickly through the
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dedication of those who are studying how the brain works and how substances work. You look at the
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work of Alexander Shulgin, for example, PCOL and T-COL, and all the cataloging they’re in.
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That is huge advances in the understanding of how things work. You look at the work of Julian,
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a prime member of drug interaction, for example,
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and you start to understand how the various substances
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affect the brain, how the brain relates,
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what receptors interact with certain substances,
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how they would be combining.
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All of this leads to an even more fascinating discussion
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of what happens when you’re not just dealing with one substance,
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but you have people on multiple substances.
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Now, there’s not really much documentation on that.
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We have a fair understanding, thanks to Arrowwood and others, of a few different combinations.
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But what happens when you’re on three or four or five different substances concurrently?
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three or four or five different substances concurrently.
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Well, we refer to that as the test pilot zone because we really don’t understand necessarily
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how the brain is going to function under those circumstances.
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But there’s a lot of interest because we see that sort of thing come in
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and we’re going to be responsible for supporting these people
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as they go through their difficulties.
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So all of this opens huge doors to a community
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that really is designed to support the understanding,
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the furtherance of understanding, the communication of understanding,
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so that we’re able to better support those in situations where they do need help.
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better support those in situations where they do need help.
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And I go back to what is a community?
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A community is an interconnected support network.
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Well, here we are.
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A lot of people really pushing the frontiers of understanding so that we can better support people in very challenging emotional states
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and help them better understand
00:18:26 ►
what they’re going through, what they’ve been through, and how they can make sense out of
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it. Personally, it’s been an adventure of the last five years. And it has opened more
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doors to more people with more understanding,
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and more importantly, more questions that need to be answered as we go forward.
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So for me, it’s been a massive discovery of people deeply caring,
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people who have developed depth of understanding relating to treatment of cases
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where people need the emotional support.
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And with that, basically, you have the very foundation of that support network. You have
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the friendships. You have the dedication. You have the quest for knowledge. You have the dedication
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to provide a better support for those around you.
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And that’s been my adventure
00:19:26 ►
through the psychedelic community.
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It’s been an absolutely wonderful understanding.
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And meeting all these people who care so deeply
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about pushing the frontiers of our understanding
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of how things work,
00:19:40 ►
that has been a very beautiful experience.
00:19:42 ►
And it evolves continuously. nothing is ever static we
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discover new things every day new research is published all the time follow the the the
00:19:52 ►
annals of maps and you’ll see exactly what’s going on comprehensive resource and it’s really
00:19:57 ►
impressive so ultimately community is research community is friendship community is learning
00:20:03 ►
community is growing and all of that is acutely present in the psychedelic community.
00:20:09 ►
Thank you.
00:20:11 ►
Questions?
00:20:13 ►
Yeah, I guess I have a question with regards to the psychedelic community
00:20:17 ►
and how we can self-identify ourselves
00:20:21 ►
and maybe build communities that are are outside of you know things like
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internet forums and things like this and and ways that we can present ourselves to i guess more
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mainstream culture and in a way that’s comprehensible does that make any does that make
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any sense i think we need to create community institutions that are recognized for their contributions to society.
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I think we need to support researchers, such as those who are being supported by MAPS,
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to do medical research into the usefulness of psychedelics.
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We need to support the artists who use their psychedelic inspirations to create art.
00:21:02 ►
We need to support activists who are pushing for drug law reform.
00:21:07 ►
And we need to create our own organizations
00:21:10 ►
and events that can bring the community together
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and form mutual support societies.
00:21:19 ►
The tea house that we started here in this camp
00:21:22 ►
is a form of psychedelic community.
00:21:25 ►
It attracts people who want an alternative to alcohol, who don’t want to go to bars,
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who may come to the tea house in search of a quiet place to reflect, rest, and rehydrate.
00:21:36 ►
And in a certain way, it helps to hopefully create the germ of the kind of psychedelic community institutions
00:21:46 ►
that I think will carry the community forward
00:21:48 ►
and support people in their struggle for their rights.
00:21:51 ►
Just a few things to add here.
00:21:55 ►
From my limited experience at the MAPS conference in 2011,
00:22:00 ►
I think this spring, we had 2,400 people.
00:22:04 ►
2011, I think, the spring, it had 2,400 people.
00:22:14 ►
What was really impressive, very impactful, was that dinner, the banquet at that conference.
00:22:17 ►
I think at least 600 or 800 people got tickets for it.
00:22:26 ►
But here you had everybody interested in the subject honoring elders, honoring the Shulgens, honoring Mountain Girl, honoring the researchers, honoring the cultural figures that were there.
00:22:34 ►
Everybody was in that room and I kind of looked out and I said, this is a community and one
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of the important functions of this community is to defend its own.
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That means, you know, as we’ve been talking about in the law, in lobbying,
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but also when the community members go a little bit off base and get themselves into trouble.
00:23:09 ►
And I think, you know, one of the topics of earlier talk I did today was, you know, there can be a propensity for some of our community members who are in a leadership position in terms of a thought leadership
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position to get trapped in public personas and to make off-the-wall statements that actually
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come back not only to bite them, but to bite and characterize the rest of the community.
00:23:25 ►
And I think what we need to do is to set up circles where we decide what is the salient and solid and agreed description, message, story, narrative around this.
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And people should buy into this is what we agree.
00:23:51 ►
I mean, nations are founded this way.
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You know, religious movements collect.
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Of course, they have schisms and they divide around these things.
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But I think we need a kind of a book of best practice
00:24:04 ►
and a book of what this is.
00:24:07 ►
And probably this is, I’m probably ignorant, it’s probably already in some books,
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but we need to put it into practice,
00:24:13 ►
and we need to help out people who get in trouble by saying,
00:24:21 ►
you know what, if you’re starting to talk about politics
00:24:26 ►
and things that are way beyond in the context of what we like to talk about,
00:24:33 ►
you’re mixing all the metaphors.
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You may be putting at risk your own reputation, your own freedom, perhaps,
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and characterizing our community in a certain way.
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So in a sense, it’s sort of a growing up. It’s a growing up. And we can do this by forming circles.
00:24:55 ►
And I think what, if you were here yesterday and the day before, what was very healthy in my book
00:25:08 ►
What was very healthy in my book was hearing Charles Shaw, who’s a very, very tough guy.
00:25:11 ►
This guy’s been through crack addiction.
00:25:14 ►
He knows about the prison system.
00:25:15 ►
He’s been through that.
00:25:17 ►
Very, very tough guy.
00:25:19 ►
Very impressive dude.
00:25:27 ►
And yet, in his talk, he said, I think the women need to be more involved and help us forward.
00:25:34 ►
And Daniel Pinchbeck, bless him, yesterday toward the end of his talk also said, this is unprompted. I think we need to, the women need to be heard from.
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We need to sort of step back and get some guidance there.
00:25:41 ►
It’s time.
00:25:43 ►
So that sounded like a really great breakthrough to me
00:25:47 ►
for the community. I’d like to say something also about personal responsibility.
00:25:53 ►
If we’re going to model good behavior for the rest of the community, we have to be really
00:25:56 ►
upright citizens. We need to act responsibly. We need to contribute to our communities.
00:26:03 ►
We need to model what a good psychedelic citizen looks like
00:26:07 ►
and we need to show that to the world
00:26:10 ►
who is more likely to demonize us
00:26:15 ►
as people who use substances
00:26:16 ►
and we need to model that for the younger generation
00:26:19 ►
so that they accept responsibility for their own activities
00:26:23 ►
and I think that we need to change the public perception
00:26:27 ►
of people who want to change their consciousness,
00:26:30 ►
seek other worlds, greater insights and spiritual freedom.
00:26:34 ►
And we need to do that in a very careful way
00:26:37 ►
by showing through our own lives
00:26:39 ►
what a good psychedelic citizen looks like.
00:26:43 ►
Who is the we in this, what we need to do?
00:26:49 ►
Is this older people or people who take psychedelics
00:26:54 ►
and live in the straight world or what?
00:26:57 ►
Anybody who uses substances to change their consciousness
00:27:01 ►
would be the we.
00:27:04 ►
Okay, thank you.
00:27:07 ►
I would actually add to that that anyone who supports the use whether or not they use substances we have many researchers who
00:27:13 ►
will never touch substances their entire life and their reputation has to be impeccable for them to
00:27:18 ►
be credible as we go progress through the government agencies in the process of approvals
00:27:23 ►
so under the circumstances i would extend that to not just those who use,
00:27:28 ►
but also those who are supporting active research in the promotion
00:27:32 ►
and in the development of these chemicals.
00:27:38 ►
Yeah, I was going to say, in my own personal experience,
00:27:43 ►
you identified we as anyone who takes a substance to alter their consciousness.
00:27:49 ►
In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of, I guess, unconscious use of psychedelics.
00:27:55 ►
And I think that probably is the community could be defined as people who engage in psychedelic substances either for personal or social transformation.
00:28:10 ►
In other words, there is that responsibility that goes along with the experience.
00:28:15 ►
And I feel like most people who take substances aren’t even aware of the Alexander Shul shulgens or the or the albert hoffman’s they don’t know about this
00:28:25 ►
tradition of exploring the mind for um for for benefit you know it’s maybe more of a distraction
00:28:33 ►
or something that’s uh just for fun or or something somebody said that sounded interesting
00:28:39 ►
and uh so i just want to hear your thoughts about that, on how to increase awareness of a tradition around using substances that is for beneficial use.
00:28:54 ►
I’d love to address that.
00:29:06 ►
where I’ve served, the people who are most likely to get into trouble, with very few exceptions,
00:29:12 ►
are those who are not really the psychedelic community. They’re those who are looking for a new experience, something different. They haven’t researched. They haven’t understood
00:29:16 ►
what they’re getting into. They haven’t understood the basic concepts of set and setting.
00:29:21 ►
The idea of the document Meeting the Divine Within,
00:29:25 ►
which is one of the reference documents
00:29:27 ►
for set and setting.
00:29:28 ►
This would just be completely news to them.
00:29:32 ►
It’s the popular thing to do,
00:29:34 ►
the fun thing of the moment,
00:29:35 ►
go with the flow, whatever,
00:29:37 ►
try something new and see what happens.
00:29:40 ►
That is a very different community
00:29:42 ►
than the psychedelic community.
00:29:46 ►
And the psychedelic community itself generally has to hold itself to a higher standard
00:29:52 ►
from a research perspective, from a usage perspective, from an exploration perspective,
00:29:56 ►
from a PR perspective.
00:29:58 ►
That word needs to get out in terms of trying to help people understand that if you want to use psychedelics as
00:30:09 ►
a healing tool or an expansion of understanding, that’s very different from recreational use.
00:30:17 ►
And recreational use is very undisciplined. And recreational use without that understanding can lead to really serious consequences.
00:30:25 ►
And those consequences range from a very, very bad emotional experience all the way through very dire effects with law enforcement and loss of jobs, loss of freedom, so on and so forth. community, I believe, needs to really put a lot greater attention onto educational campaigns
00:30:47 ►
to help people understand what they’re doing. That’s a very, very difficult battle,
00:30:53 ►
because the psychedelic community, as we know it, yes, there were 800 people at that conference
00:30:58 ►
that MAPS put on. That was absolutely an amazing conference. However, that’s a very small number
00:31:06 ►
an amazing conference. However, that’s a very small number of people compared to the whole set of people who use substances. And responsible use of substances,
00:31:11 ►
follow the set and setting, whether it’s in a clinical environment or a personal environment,
00:31:18 ►
that’s very different from a lot of things we see. So I believe we have to really advocate
00:31:23 ►
for understanding
00:31:25 ►
of what substances can and cannot do.
00:31:28 ►
And that’s something that is very difficult to do
00:31:30 ►
when you really have a lot of restrictions of what you can and cannot say
00:31:34 ►
and the tremendous amount of misinformation currently existent
00:31:39 ►
promoted through various channels about the various substances involved.
00:31:43 ►
promoted through various channels about the various substances involved.
00:31:52 ►
I’d like to add something about the role of elders in traditional societies, in tribal societies.
00:32:00 ►
Elders have a really important role to play to pass down knowledge and to educate communities.
00:32:05 ►
I think that the elders in the psychedelic community have an especially important role to play and that they should be seen as resources, source of important information
00:32:13 ►
and also a warning to people who would use psychedelics in an unconscious way. I think that people who decide to explore these
00:32:27 ►
realms should find themselves an elder, a mentor. It doesn’t have to be a person who uses these
00:32:34 ►
substances, but a person who knows about these substances and can provide helpful information,
00:32:40 ►
support, and deep knowledge. And I think that moving away from a tribal structure
00:32:47 ►
in a traditional family structure has really in a way prevented us from this
00:32:54 ►
passing down of knowledge from one generation to the next and we need to
00:32:59 ►
recreate that connection as a new elder I’m really happy to hear that and I appreciate it. And I think that
00:33:07 ►
from my own point of view, when I began working to try to build a psychedelic community for myself,
00:33:14 ►
I thought creating denser layers of culture, more meaningful art, work that goes deeper and has more to say, was an important part of this.
00:33:28 ►
So in some ways I’d like to advocate for those guys that are in the five percenter group
00:33:33 ►
that are doing extremely edgy stuff that will never be okay with the government,
00:33:40 ►
that will never be okay with the media, will never be on PBS, will never be on a voter referendum.
00:33:47 ►
But there are other people out there,
00:33:49 ►
many of our dear, dear friends of mine
00:33:51 ►
that are very edgy outsider people,
00:33:54 ►
and they’re part of this community.
00:33:56 ►
But for a few accidents of luck in genetics,
00:34:00 ►
there go I or you.
00:34:02 ►
And so I want to keep an open heart to those guys
00:34:05 ►
that have screwed up along the way
00:34:06 ►
and remember that these elders that have fucked up a few hours
00:34:11 ►
before our role on the stage
00:34:12 ►
operated without any elders at all.
00:34:16 ►
And they operated without any guidance
00:34:18 ►
and even access to the indigenous leaders
00:34:21 ►
was very rare and uneven.
00:34:28 ►
So I have been reminded a thousand times of this one burning man about forgiveness and how important it is to even those crazy frat boys
00:34:35 ►
that end up vomiting all over somebody are looking for something they haven’t found yet. And
00:34:42 ►
it’s hard to do, but some way they’re the Buddha nature
00:34:45 ►
as much as I am or you are.
00:34:48 ►
And I really want to hold space for even the most fucked up folks
00:34:52 ►
that are trying to find their way back.
00:34:55 ►
And a lot of them have been my friends.
00:34:57 ►
So I appreciate very deeply that this has gone this far.
00:35:01 ►
I’ve watched this community develop.
00:35:03 ►
And to see you guys sitting
00:35:05 ►
up there with so much integrity and love speaking so openly about such a sacred thing that we’ve all
00:35:11 ►
been trying to share is deeply heartening to me personally. So thank you all for your individual
00:35:17 ►
work and having the courage to be who you’ve been and asking people to go ahead and emulate us.
00:35:24 ►
We’re full people. We’re taking on this and we’re going to go ahead and emulate us.
00:35:26 ►
We’re full people.
00:35:29 ►
We’re taking on this, and we’re going to carry it to another level.
00:35:32 ►
And I want to thank you all very much for that.
00:35:45 ►
Yeah, I just wanted to, this has to do with the female ratio that was mentioned. And I wanted to hear maybe your thoughts on why there aren’t more female elders.
00:35:59 ►
Because, I mean, I look here and it’s mostly male here.
00:36:02 ►
And is it because there’s more male psychedelic users in general?
00:36:08 ►
Or what?
00:36:12 ►
Just your thought.
00:36:14 ►
I think that’s a really good question.
00:36:17 ►
And it’s a really complicated question.
00:36:21 ►
There are lots of psychedelic women elders.
00:36:24 ►
They’re just underground
00:36:25 ►
most of them
00:36:27 ►
and they have really good reasons to be underground
00:36:30 ►
women are more vulnerable
00:36:33 ►
in some degree
00:36:35 ►
they’re more vulnerable to have their children
00:36:38 ►
taken away from them
00:36:39 ►
to lose their licenses to practice
00:36:42 ►
if they’re healers
00:36:44 ►
they’re healers.
00:36:51 ►
They’re more vulnerable to legal action because they earn less money and they can’t afford good lawyers.
00:36:53 ►
And there’s a long, long history of the persecution of women who understand plants,
00:36:58 ►
which goes back thousands of years.
00:37:01 ►
And as a result, a lot of those women have formed their own underground
00:37:06 ►
communities. They’re big, and they’re deep, and they hold a lot of knowledge, but they’re largely
00:37:13 ►
private. And they’re private because women feel often, I think, that there’s not a safe space to step up and talk about their work or tell their personal stories.
00:37:29 ►
That’s one of the things we’ve tried to do during the Women’s Visionary Congress is to create that space.
00:37:35 ►
It’s a tricky balance between creating private and public space to do that.
00:37:41 ►
But I think that within the past five years, there’s been a real flowering of more women coming forward,
00:37:48 ►
both elder women and younger women,
00:37:50 ►
who are stepping up, taking leadership roles,
00:37:52 ►
speaking out, becoming researchers and activists,
00:37:56 ►
doing amazing art,
00:37:57 ►
and I expect to see that flower continue to unfold.
00:38:01 ►
I’m very optimistic.
00:38:04 ►
I know there’s a lot of overlap in the two communities, but I was
00:38:08 ►
wondering if any of you had any
00:38:12 ►
thoughts on what the psychedelic community might learn
00:38:16 ►
in terms of structure and practice from the Occupy community.
00:38:22 ►
This is a
00:38:24 ►
real guess here, but it would seem to me that
00:38:28 ►
the tenacity and courage of some of the early pioneers in speaking frontally and
00:38:38 ►
directly against power structures and abuse by the power structures, which in some cases led to their
00:38:47 ►
crackdown on their incarceration and changes in their lives, I think they provide some of the
00:38:54 ►
only or few examples of people willing to call a spade a spade and criticize. And so I think in a way the elders of this community
00:39:05 ►
who have been through inner challenges
00:39:10 ►
can be very strong and clear
00:39:12 ►
when it comes time to basically face down abuse of power.
00:39:20 ►
Very clear people who are clear with their own ego involvement,
00:39:26 ►
with their own strength of being able to withstand the onslaughts that come,
00:39:32 ►
and some of the potential strongest changemakers
00:39:35 ►
that will emerge in the 21st century to face this problem.
00:39:40 ►
So an Occupy 2.0 could draw that kind of strength.
00:39:48 ►
I think also the Occupy movements have illustrated pretty clearly the amount of intense surveillance
00:39:58 ►
that a lot of activists are under right now, and the importance of maintaining a certain
00:40:06 ►
amount of security
00:40:07 ►
in your data
00:40:09 ►
not being
00:40:12 ►
terribly
00:40:13 ►
open about
00:40:14 ►
people’s plans or people’s roles
00:40:17 ►
not saying everything
00:40:19 ►
on Facebook
00:40:20 ►
being careful
00:40:22 ►
about how much information is revealed if you’re planning an action or
00:40:28 ►
who you’re working with or what your political plans are.
00:40:35 ►
This government does a lot of surveillance of citizens here in the United States and
00:40:39 ►
of activists in particular, and I think that people who are on the forefront of the Occupy community
00:40:45 ►
have made it
00:40:48 ►
clear that they need to defend themselves
00:40:50 ►
as activists and citizens
00:40:51 ►
from that kind of surveillance and persecution
00:40:53 ►
I’d also like to say that
00:40:56 ►
the balance of
00:40:58 ►
genders and the
00:41:00 ►
racial
00:41:02 ►
balance in the Occupy community
00:41:03 ►
has been pretty broad,
00:41:05 ►
and that’s been really good to see.
00:41:08 ►
People of color, people of all genders,
00:41:12 ►
people of a lot of different political persuasions
00:41:14 ►
are all joining together,
00:41:16 ►
and I think that’s a real model for the psychedelic community.
00:41:23 ►
What, in your opinion, would it take to have these medicines legalized and
00:41:29 ►
is that a possible scenario and if so what would that look like
00:41:34 ►
well i think it it’s going to take a lot of work on different fronts
00:41:39 ►
it’s going to take the researchers to show that there are important medical uses for psychedelics to treat PTSD, to address end-of-life issues.
00:41:54 ►
I think it’s the research community that will lead the way in that part of the argument.
00:42:07 ►
of the argument will be the activists who push for drug law reform with medical cannabis and legalized cannabis is the sharp point of that spear i think it’s going to be individual family
00:42:15 ►
members who will agitate for the right for their elders to have access to these substances for
00:42:23 ►
medical cannabis patients to have access to cannabis
00:42:25 ►
and it will be a cultural
00:42:27 ►
movement that won’t put up with
00:42:30 ►
the prosecution
00:42:30 ►
and demonization of this community
00:42:34 ►
I think it will take all
00:42:36 ►
of those efforts in combination
00:42:38 ►
to
00:42:39 ►
make these substances
00:42:42 ►
legal, I hope it happens in my
00:42:44 ►
lifetime, sometimes I’m more optimistic than make these substances legal. I hope it happens in my lifetime.
00:42:47 ►
Sometimes I’m more optimistic than pessimistic,
00:42:51 ►
and sometimes the pessimism seems warranted.
00:42:55 ►
It will take a lot of political courage
00:42:56 ►
on the part of politicians
00:42:57 ►
who don’t have much political courage,
00:42:59 ►
and we need to encourage them to stand up
00:43:02 ►
and be real people
00:43:03 ►
and stop incarcerating their own families and their citizens and their neighbors.
00:43:09 ►
One of the big things is medical benefit.
00:43:11 ►
If we can prove medical benefit through absolutely impeccable research with really, really well-known institutes such as Johns Hopkins,
00:43:23 ►
with researchers who are absolutely beyond reproach.
00:43:28 ►
That is huge. And as far as the hope is concerned, well, I just have one anecdote
00:43:36 ►
that gives me a lot of hope. It’s a history of someone I know very well, knew very well.
00:43:43 ►
It’s a history of someone I know very well, knew very well.
00:43:51 ►
He was a lifelong, very, very, very conservative Republican in very conservative family.
00:43:54 ►
And he developed stomach cancer.
00:44:03 ►
And at the end of life, his daughter made a very interesting request for a significant amount of cannabis for him.
00:44:11 ►
And this man, who never ever would have supported cannabis use under any circumstances,
00:44:19 ►
enjoyed very, very positive last several months of his life on lovely pot brownies and things like this that he never would have otherwise understood.
00:44:22 ►
His wife also indulged horror’s shock, and it really provided
00:44:28 ►
a peaceful transition in a terminal disease state for a lifelong conservative. And the more of those
00:44:36 ►
stories that get promoted where people have said, you know, let’s get real. This made a positive
00:44:41 ►
difference under really adverse circumstances. The more of those stories that get out, the more the tide will change in terms of what is the appropriate thing to do.
00:44:52 ►
With the aging baby boomer community, with the increase in the incidence of suffering in America and health system in particular,
00:45:01 ►
people are looking for better solutions, particularly in pain management and end-of-life care.
00:45:07 ►
These are two very promising frontiers where people will come to understand that they don’t have to be subject to traditional pharmaceuticals that dull and terminate their ability to think when they have alternatives that provide them peace and well-being.
00:45:24 ►
And those are the bright spots in our
00:45:26 ►
future. You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives
00:45:33 ►
one thought at a time. Before I say anything else, I want to give a shout out to all of our
00:45:40 ►
fellow salonners who remain quite active in support of the Occupy Movement.
00:45:45 ►
Just because you haven’t heard me talking about it much lately doesn’t mean that it’s gone away,
00:45:50 ►
or that I’ve lost my interest in it.
00:45:53 ►
And I think that the person who asked the question about what lessons our community can learn from the movement
00:45:59 ►
was right on track.
00:46:01 ►
I frequently hear from fellow salonners around the world who haven’t let up at all since the militarized police forces
00:46:08 ►
in the U.S. and other countries crushed our public displays of solidarity.
00:46:14 ►
And from what I hear, the movement is way beyond the 2.0 version
00:46:18 ►
that Bruce just mentioned.
00:46:20 ►
Here’s just one example.
00:46:22 ►
A friend of mine recently returned from a major conference that focused on the widespread
00:46:28 ►
alternative currency movement.
00:46:31 ►
And if you don’t know about alternative currencies, then maybe you want to do a little surfing
00:46:35 ►
and inform yourself about them.
00:46:38 ►
But at that conference there were occupiers there who were handing out some very professionally
00:46:43 ►
done literature on laminated cards
00:46:45 ►
that discuss things like public banks and our current monetary system.
00:46:50 ►
And the cards, by the way, are very cleverly numbered in a series with titles like
00:46:54 ►
AccuCard No. 5 and AccuCard No. 20.
00:46:58 ►
I like that.
00:47:00 ►
And just now, in fact, I went to Google News and did a search for recent news about the movement
00:47:06 ►
and got over 3,000 hits.
00:47:09 ►
So, trust me, the Occupy movement is alive and well and probably is closer to you than you think.
00:47:16 ►
One of the other things that I hope you picked up just now,
00:47:20 ►
that maybe wasn’t emphasized enough,
00:47:22 ►
is that simply by taking a psychedelic substance
00:47:26 ►
doesn’t automatically make someone a conscious member of the psychedelic community.
00:47:31 ►
Now, Twilight did remark on that, and I hope that you understood what he was saying.
00:47:35 ►
This isn’t an exclusionary view by any means.
00:47:39 ►
Granted, people who do have a psychedelic experience
00:47:42 ►
usually wind up becoming more involved with the wider community, but that has to be a conscious decision on their part. While dancing
00:47:50 ►
on X is great fun, and I’ve done it myself, that isn’t what being psychedelic is all about.
00:47:57 ►
It’s about consciousness, your consciousness, and your intent to become the master of your own mind, which is much more difficult than first meets the eye.
00:48:08 ►
And, in fact, that’s what I find so encouraging about you and the rest of our fellow salonners.
00:48:14 ►
Let’s be honest here.
00:48:16 ►
If you had to assign these podcasts to a single topic,
00:48:20 ►
well, it would probably be philosophy.
00:48:22 ►
But if you go out and tell your friends that you are listening to a podcast about philosophy,
00:48:27 ►
well, you most likely would get laughed at,
00:48:31 ►
because who wants to spend their time on something as boring as that?
00:48:35 ►
And yet, that is just what you are doing here in the salon.
00:48:39 ►
Hopefully that revelation won’t drive you away.
00:48:43 ►
Now, I’m going to go off on a little tack right now that
00:48:45 ►
you may not like to hear. In fact, in the panel discussion that we just listened to, we heard
00:48:51 ►
Bruce Dahmer warn about mixing politics with our other discussions that are of interest to the
00:48:57 ►
worldwide psychedelic community, because discussions like that could put me in a bad light or cause the government to watch me even more closely.
00:49:06 ►
And he’s probably right about that.
00:49:09 ►
Nonetheless, since Annie Oak brought up the fact that we should all be more secure about our data,
00:49:15 ►
not to mention the recent revelations about the extent and depth of the U.S. government’s program
00:49:21 ►
of spying on every single person in this country,
00:49:24 ►
well, I’m going to take this discussion in a security and political direction right now.
00:49:30 ►
Since today’s program is about building community,
00:49:33 ►
I don’t see how we can avoid the subject of politics,
00:49:36 ►
for, as Annie Oak rightly points out,
00:49:39 ►
our community is engaged in one of the most important of all civil rights struggles,
00:49:43 ►
which is the right to control our own consciousness,
00:49:47 ►
to have control over our own thoughts and ideas
00:49:50 ►
without fear of having our doors kicked in
00:49:52 ►
by the secret thought police in the middle of the night.
00:49:56 ►
And if that sounds a little paranoid,
00:49:58 ►
I’ll just refer you to The Daily Show
00:50:00 ►
and John Oliver’s recent story about the NSA spying
00:50:04 ►
in which he said,
00:50:06 ►
Good news! You are not paranoid after all.
00:50:09 ►
The government is actually spying on you.
00:50:13 ►
Recently, a new book was just published,
00:50:16 ►
and it was written by Gar Alperovitz,
00:50:19 ►
and it’s titled,
00:50:20 ►
What Then Must We Do?
00:50:22 ►
Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution.
00:50:25 ►
And here’s a short paragraph by him that puts our current position in context.
00:50:31 ►
And I quote,
00:50:32 ►
We are at a very remarkable moment in American history.
00:50:36 ►
Even as we face massive economic, social, and environmental challenges,
00:50:41 ►
more and more people are beginning to see that politics as usual
00:50:45 ►
doesn’t work, that the problems are fundamental to the system itself. These issues are on the
00:50:51 ►
table for the first time in many decades. So there needs to be an answer at some point
00:50:56 ►
in terms of system design to the question of what a system looks like that isn’t corporate
00:51:02 ►
capitalism and isn’t state socialism,
00:51:05 ►
but begins with community and how we build it.
00:51:09 ►
Just now we heard Twilight say that a community is a support network.
00:51:14 ►
So I’m going to suggest a little test to see just how much of a community we might be.
00:51:20 ►
And the test is to see how many of our fellow slaunters I’m going to alienate
00:51:24 ►
by taking the following steps.
00:51:29 ►
First, by the end of July, I will no longer respond to any email that comes from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo accounts.
00:51:37 ►
So, if you have a Gmail, Hotmail, Ymail, or Rocketmail account, well, I’m afraid that you won’t be hearing back from me.
00:51:44 ►
Ymail or Rocketmail account, well, I’m afraid that you won’t be hearing back from me.
00:51:49 ►
My reason for doing this is that while you may not have any concerns with these companies turning all of your email over to Obama’s government goons at the NSA, I for one resent
00:51:55 ►
their data mining my email responses to see what I’m thinking, what I’m talking to you about.
00:52:01 ►
Next, also by the end of July, I plan on closing my Facebook account for the same
00:52:07 ►
reason. Now, the reason that I’m going to wait until the end of July to do this is to give all
00:52:13 ►
of our fellow salonners a chance to add their views about these decisions in the comments sections of
00:52:19 ►
our Notes to the Psychedelic Salon blog, which as know, you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us.
00:52:26 ►
So you can go to the program notes for this podcast, which is number 355, and there we’ll
00:52:32 ►
have a little discussion about whether this is a good idea or not. But unless somebody comes up
00:52:37 ►
with a really convincing argument for me to not take those steps, well, then that’s what I’m going
00:52:43 ►
to be doing. So in addition to suggesting that you find a new email provider in the event that, like
00:52:49 ►
almost everybody else on the planet, you are using one of the big three email providers,
00:52:54 ►
I’m also suggesting, as have several of the speakers we’ve had here in the salon, that
00:53:00 ►
you only surf using the Tor anonymizer.
00:53:03 ►
that you only surf using the Tor anonymizer.
00:53:10 ►
And you can get it at torproject, T-O-R-P-R-O-J-E-C-T, torproject.org.
00:53:12 ►
And it’s really simple to set up.
00:53:17 ►
At the Tor website, you can download a package for almost any operating system,
00:53:21 ►
and all you have to do is unzip it and click on the browser icon.
00:53:25 ►
And this will get you into the Tor network and launch the Tor browser,
00:53:29 ►
which is just a modified version of the Mozilla browser,
00:53:32 ►
so you’ll still have all the functionality you now have.
00:53:36 ►
The main difference will be that you find it just a little bit slower than without going through all the ever-changing levels of the network.
00:53:40 ►
And I think this is something you should do right away,
00:53:43 ►
today, right now. Also, you should do right away today right now also you
00:53:46 ►
should probably use somebody other than Google for your searches if you don’t
00:53:50 ►
want them sending your every keystroke to the government’s data mining servers
00:53:54 ►
personally I have found that duck duck go just like it sounds duck duck go.com
00:54:00 ►
I found them to be every bit as useful as the Google search.
00:54:14 ►
Now, getting back to email, there are really a lot of alternatives to the handful of huge internet companies who give free email accounts.
00:54:19 ►
One alternative would be to set up your own mail server under your own URL.
00:54:25 ►
Now, maybe this would be a good way for you to put a stake in the ground for your own psychedelic community,
00:54:28 ►
where a few of you get together and set up your site.
00:54:30 ►
Maybe all you use it for is email.
00:54:34 ►
But the cost is really low, particularly if you share it with others.
00:54:39 ►
For example, the hosting company that I use has plans starting at $6 a month,
00:54:43 ►
and they come with an unlimited number of email accounts. But I think that you can probably get an even better deal with the hosting company that sponsors the Joe Rogan Experience.
00:54:50 ►
I’ve heard him talk about them on the podcast of his, but I forget their name,
00:54:55 ►
and after searching through several of Joe’s websites, I couldn’t find it.
00:54:59 ►
So you’ll have to listen to his podcast to get the name of the company and the discount code that they give to Joe’s listeners.
00:55:07 ►
And speaking of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, while I haven’t heard his latest program with Bobcat Goldthwait, I’ve heard that it’s great.
00:55:15 ►
And if you’ve never heard any of Joe’s programs, I suggest that maybe you want to begin with his conversations with Douglas Rushkoff, Alex Gray, and Graham Hancock.
00:55:24 ►
Three separate podcasts, and Graham Hancock, three separate podcasts,
00:55:26 ►
and they’re really interesting conversations. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
00:55:31 ►
Another podcast that you may want to check out is the Pursuit podcast with Robert and Trent as
00:55:37 ►
hosts, and their most recent program, number 56 I think it is, features a long conversation with yours truly.
00:55:46 ►
Last Saturday I had a wonderful conversation with the two of them,
00:55:49 ►
and you may find it interesting as well.
00:55:52 ►
But if you don’t, they have many other programs for your listening pleasure.
00:55:57 ►
And speaking of other podcasts,
00:55:59 ►
I just heard some new music from East Forest on the Dope Fiends latest program.
00:56:04 ►
I’ve featured some music of Trevor and the East Forest Project on several of our other salon podcasts.
00:56:10 ►
And he’s a longtime salonner.
00:56:12 ►
And you can find his music at East Forest, all one word, E-A-S-T-F-O-R-E-S-T, eastforest.org.
00:56:21 ►
Also, as a little message to Psychonaut, the moderator at Dope Tribe Live,
00:56:26 ►
I’ll do my best to join you this Sunday.
00:56:29 ►
And should our fellow slaughters want to join in,
00:56:31 ►
you can find us at dopefiend.co.uk on Sundays,
00:56:37 ►
early afternoon here in California and 8 till midnight in the UK,
00:56:41 ►
where the show originates.
00:56:43 ►
and 8 till Midnight in the UK, where the show originates.
00:56:50 ►
Well, I think that today’s will be the last of the 2012 Palenque Norte lectures that we’ll be listening to here in the salon,
00:56:52 ►
but it isn’t all that long until the 2013 Palenque Norte lectures
00:56:57 ►
will be held at this year’s Burning Man Festival.
00:57:00 ►
And just listen to this lineup of speakers,
00:57:03 ►
many of whom you’ll be able to listen to here in the salon this fall and winter.
00:57:08 ►
And, by the way, I’m reading this from their website,
00:57:10 ►
which you can get to via palenkenorte.com.
00:57:14 ►
So here are the confirmed speakers so far.
00:57:17 ►
Ken Adams, who’s a filmmaker and created Alien Dreamtime
00:57:21 ►
and the Terrence McKenna Experience.
00:57:24 ►
Steve Bierman, Ph.D., Social
00:57:26 ►
Psychologist and creator of the Interchange Counseling Institute, Dustin Boyer, who I know
00:57:32 ►
from the Symbiosis gatherings, and he’s the CEO of Taco Copter. You ought to check that out,
00:57:39 ►
that’s pretty interesting. Brad Burge, who’s the Communications Director for MAPS, Bruce Dahmer, who you know quite well already,
00:57:47 ►
Alicia Danforth, who’s my friend and psychedelic drug researcher,
00:57:51 ►
Michael Devine, who’s a visionary artist and whose Kickstarter campaign just came to an end,
00:57:57 ►
and this fall I look forward to getting a book of visionary art from him.
00:58:02 ►
Rick Doblin is going to speak.
00:58:03 ►
As you know, Rick is the founder of MAPS,
00:58:06 ►
and Rick and I go back to even before he founded MAPS. We started exchanging correspondence.
00:58:12 ►
Also, Michael Garfield, who is a visionary artist and musician that you heard from in the last
00:58:17 ►
podcast. John Gilmore, who is the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF,
00:58:23 ►
will be speaking again this year. Also speaking will be George Greer, MD, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF. We’ll be speaking again this year.
00:58:25 ►
Also speaking will be George Greer, MD,
00:58:28 ►
and co-founder of the Hefter Research Institute.
00:58:31 ►
And Roland Griffiths, PhD,
00:58:33 ►
who is a researcher at Johns Hopkins Medical Center
00:58:36 ►
and has been in a lot of news lately with much of his psychedelic research.
00:58:41 ►
John Harrison, who goes by PsyD,
00:58:44 ►
which is something I hadn’t heard of before,
00:58:46 ►
but he’s an Ibogaine researcher.
00:58:49 ►
Kevin Herbert, a software engineer.
00:58:51 ►
Brian Hewlett, PhD, consciousness researcher
00:58:54 ►
and somebody we’ve heard here in the salon.
00:58:56 ►
And my dear friend, although we’re not close friends,
00:58:59 ►
but every time we see each other, we feel like friends.
00:59:02 ►
It’s Martina Hoffman, visionary artist.
00:59:05 ►
Also, Sean Holm, who is a shaman.
00:59:08 ►
Daniel Jabor, who is the founder of the Psychedelic Society of San Francisco.
00:59:13 ►
Catherine McLean, Ph.D., who is a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.
00:59:19 ►
Maggie Mayhem.
00:59:20 ►
It doesn’t say anything about Maggie, so I don’t know for sure what that’s going to be.
00:59:24 ►
Also, we’ll be hearing from Dr. Natalie Metz, who is a naturopathic doctor and ethnobotanist,
00:59:31 ►
and we’ve actually heard from her from last year’s Plank and Orte lectures as well.
00:59:35 ►
John Mitchell, who is a journalist and creator of the Daily Portal.
00:59:40 ►
Annie Oak is going to be back again, and of course we just heard from Annie.
00:59:43 ►
She’s the co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress and the creator of the Full Circle Tea House.
00:59:49 ►
Also, Daniel Pinchbeck will be back.
00:59:52 ►
And, of course, Daniel has been with the Palenque Norte Lecture since the very first one in 2003.
00:59:57 ►
Also, Lynn Pointe, who is the lead organizer of the Zendo Project and a clinical research assistant at MAPS.
01:00:05 ►
Audrey Redfield, Ph.D., consciousness researcher.
01:00:09 ►
Paul Stamets, who’s a Ph.D., mycologist and author.
01:00:14 ►
Probably nobody in the world knows more about mushrooms than Paul, not just psychedelic
01:00:19 ►
mushrooms, particularly medicinal mushrooms and many other uses for mushrooms that you
01:00:24 ►
maybe not have heard about.
01:00:26 ►
Also, Chelsea Starr, Ph.D., will be here.
01:00:30 ►
The Tea Fairy, author of Tea Time on Arrowwood.org.
01:00:34 ►
And Brian Wallace will be back.
01:00:36 ►
Brian, of course, you know, is a chocolate alchemist and ethnobotanist.
01:00:40 ►
So that’s the lineup as it stands so far for the 2013 Palenque Norte lectures.
01:00:47 ►
Needless to say, they’re going to be fantastic.
01:00:50 ►
And if you’re at the Bern this year, I hope that you’ll stop by and listen to a few of what I expect to be some wonderful presentations.
01:00:58 ►
And for those of us who aren’t going to be able to make it to the Bern this year,
01:01:02 ►
well, we’re still going to be able to enjoy these talks
01:01:05 ►
in comfort on our own MP3 players later in the year.
01:01:09 ►
So, for now, this is Lorenzo,
01:01:11 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:01:14 ►
Be well, my friends.