0:00
I mean, academia is, in some ways, one of the more corrupted institutions that we have to deal with.
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This is one reason I never tried to get tenure, because I wasn't willing to play the game. And I wanted to teach.
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And I taught a lot about psychedelics.
0:18
And I think my supervisors, at the time I was an adjunct professor, they never looked too closely at what I was teaching because my classes were always over enrolled. Right?
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And so, "Well, that's a measure.
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He must be doing some right.
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So we'll leave him alone." But I was done.
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Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.
0:45
Sometimes we get caught up in what feel like infinite loops when trying to figure things out.
0:50
Markets go up and down, research is presented and then refuted, and we find ourselves right back where we started.
0:57
The goal of this podcast is to learn how we can reset our thinking on issues that hopefully leaves us with a better understanding as to why we think the way we think and how we might be able to change that to avoid going in infinite loops of thought.
1:14
We hope to offer our listeners a fresh perspective on a variety of issues and look at them through a multifaceted lens — including history, philosophy, art, science, linguistics, and yes, also through quantitative analysis.
1:28
And through these discussions help you not only become a better investor, but also become a more nuanced thinker.
1:38
With each episode we hope to bring you along with us as we learn together.
1:46
Thanks for joining us, now please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops.
1:50
Disclaimer: Jim O'Shaughnessy is chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, where Jamie Catherwood is an associate.
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All opinions expressed by Jim, Jamie and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
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Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, hello everyone.
2:22
It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another episode of Infinite Loops.
2:26
Today, I am delighted to have as my guest, Dennis McKenna, who is somewhat of a legendary figure in the whole idea of ethno-pharmacology and understanding and researching plant-based medicines, the cultures that used them extensively, as well as why they fell out of favor in the west.
2:51
And hopefully now, are coming back into favor in the west with all of the research going on.
2:57
He is the co-founder of the McKenna Institute.
3:01
And the thing I really wanted to talk with you about, Dennis, because I was unable to attend for personal reasons, was the 55th anniversary of a conference that you started 55 years ago. Welcome.
3:14
Dennis McKenna: Thank you so much, James.
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Do you prefer James or Jim? Jim O'Shaughnessy: Jim.
3:20
It's one of those funny things, Dennis, where I'm James Patrick O'Shaughnessy.
3:25
And I sign all of my checks, James Patrick O'Shaughnessy.
3:29
Written four books that are all James P. O'Shaughnessy.
3:31
But honestly, if somebody was behind me and said, James, I wouldn't even look around. Dennis McKenna: Okay.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: So Jim is great.
3:37
Dennis McKenna: So we'll keep it to Jim. Yeah.
3:41
Just one minor correction there, Jim.
3:44
We're not the McKenna Institute where the McKenna Academy.
3:47
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Ah, thank you.
3:48
Dennis McKenna: Of Natural Philosophy is the full title.
3:51
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Thanks.
3:52
Dennis McKenna: But I but if you look at mckenna.
3:52
academy on the web, it should come up. Yeah.
3:58
So we're not an institute. We are a nonprofit.
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We're fully listed as such with the IRS.
4:05
People can feel free to send money or not as they are so inclined.
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But we can give tax deductions.
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But anyway, we don't need to get into that.
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People can look at the website and see what we're up to. And yeah.
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I'm still sort of recuperating from this ESPD 55 conference that we did in the UK. It ended on the 27th.
4:33
We did it from the 23rd to the 27th.
4:37
It was fantastic, if I do say so myself.
4:41
It was very well received and it was the five year follow up to ESPD 50, which I did in 2017.
4:52
And that was the 50 year sort of commemorative event about the original ESPD conference, which was not originated by me.
5:04
It was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health in San Francisco in 1967.
5:12
And you probably know the background of it.
5:15
I don't need to get into details.
5:17
But basically, it was a closed conference and they were supposed to do follow-ups every 10 years.
5:24
Well, they did this amazing conference.
5:26
Published this book out of it.
5:28
That's all the taxpayers ever got out of it.
5:33
But I was one of those, I wasn't even paying taxes at the time.
5:36
But it came into my hands and at the age of 17, and it was an inspiration for me, that book, too.
5:45
Because it made me realize that this is a real discipline. There's cool stuff here.
5:51
There's botany, there's chemistry, there's anthropology and pharmacology and all that.
5:56
That was really influential in sort of influencing my decision to go in the direction of ethno-pharmacology, which was not really a discipline at that time.
6:07
Or shall we say, an emerging discipline. So I did.
6:11
That's what I dedicated my career to.
6:13
And since the government never followed up on their promise, I always wanted to do a follow-up conference.
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Well, 50 years went by and the opportunity never really came up.
6:26
But in 2017, everything fell into place.
6:29
A venue, amazing place to do it. Support.
6:35
And a great team that helped me organize it. So we did it. Also in the UK.
6:42
And then, in the spirit of the thing, we did this five year follow up ESPD 55.
6:47
Which was, if anything, even better. And it was great.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: So- Dennis McKenna: Very well received and lots of fun.
6:56
Lots of work, but lots of fun.
6:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So what I'd like to do is take a step back.
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And for our listeners who may not be familiar with the goals of the conference, if you could give a bit of a history.
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Because right now, I think that we are at a kind of a tipping point, in my opinion, where people are beginning to see the efficacy of psychedelics and psychoactive substances for a broad range of ailments and/or personal development.
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The tests have been going so well with our veterans who suffered from PTSD, depression, alcoholism.
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And I was talking to a friend who is also quite well versed in this subject.
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And I think that all of this now being out in the open I had on my podcast Brian Muraresku, who wrote that wonderful book about the religion with no name.
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So what I'd like to do, if it's okay with you, if you could just sort of take a step back, explain to our listeners exactly the ideas and goals of both the conference and, again, the McKenna Academy.
8:12
And thank you for the correction there.
8:14
Because I love the tagline on that.
8:17
Your goal there was to be a catalyst for transformation of global consciousness and collective intelligence with science and ancient wisdom.
8:26
I mean, that's incredible. So if you would, please.
8:30
Dennis McKenna: Well, yeah.
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I mean that pretty much puts it into a nutshell.
8:36
But overall, that is our goal is. It's an academy.
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So our goal is educational, obviously.
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And our mission statement says that we want to be a catalyst for this transformation of global consciousness.
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And as you know, psychedelics are very much at the center of that.
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People are having these experiences, whether from mushrooms or ayahuasca or some of the other plant and fungal medicines.
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And coming away with revelations, in a sense.
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Or renewed sort of framework in terms of their understanding of our relationship to nature.
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And this is right at the heart of the crisis of our time, because we look at the planetary situation, the climate crisis, and all this.
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At the heart of it is the fact that we've just gotten out of sync with nature.
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And we have succumbed, in some ways, to the poisonous perceptions, I'm sorry, of the Judeao-Christian philosophy, which says that we own nature and it exists for us to exploit.
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And we're busy exploiting it, even as we are busy destroying it.
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And what is fundamentally the problem with that perspective is, we don't own nature. We are within nature.
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And nature runs the show.
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And we need to learn how to work in harmony with nature and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
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I mean, right now, the human species is maybe the most problematic species on the planet because of our ability to impact the homeostatic mechanisms that keep the planet tolerable for life.
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We're pressing those on every level.
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So psychedelics can be a catalyst for reframing that perspective.
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And many people, from their psychedelic experiences, especially with the natural psychedelics, come away with this sort of reframing understanding of our relationship to nature.
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And that's really important.
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Because if we're going to get a handle on this thing, there has to be global shift in consciousness and global misunderstanding of where we fit into the picture.
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And that's what the academy is mainly.
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That is our overarching mission.
11:31
And then within that, we want to be an educational force for helping people appreciate the wisdom of indigenous peoples and the wisdom of science.
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Because these things are not incompatible.
11:48
And so we want to build bridges between these things where the best of science and the best of indigenous wisdom can synergize each other and cross fertilize each other.
12:01
And that's very much part of our educational agenda.
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And we do that through a lot of virtual conferences and things because those are the options that were open to us for the last couple years.
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But also, physical events.
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And we want to do more like that.
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This was the first physical conference we did through the academy since 2019. And we want to do more.
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That would include retreats in South America, which is kind of what we were doing before we actually formally founded the academy.
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I was hosting ayahuasca retreats in the Sacred Valley of Peru, working with a person who is now the executive director of the academy, Christina Gioia.
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But we got together originally just organizing these ayahuasca retreats down there at this beautiful guest house that we both are in love with.
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So the mission continues. That's what we're doing.
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We showed at the conference, we've started this program or this ...
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I guess, under the umbrella of the academy, we started this program called bio-nosis.
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Which is a bio plus nosis. Life knowledge.
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And that's focused of this bridging between ancestral knowledge and modern scientific knowledge.
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And it's actually focused on, or that the focus of it is this university in Iquitos, UNAP.
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It's called the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano de Puno, which I've been affiliated with.
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I'm not formally affiliated with, but I've been working with people there for 40 years, longer than 40 years.
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Particularly one person who is now the curator of the herbarium named Juan Reese, who is one of the most knowledgeable people about Amazonian plants.
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Not just medicines, but just the entire floor of the Amazon, especially in his area.
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And when we first met, we were both graduate students. This was 1981.
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He was a forestry student at the university.
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And I was from the University of British Columbia where I was doing my PhD.
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And he and I have worked together ever since.
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I mean, he was charged by his supervisor, then director of the herbarium, Dr. Franklin Iola.
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And I think the conversation probably went something like, "Here's this gringo.
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He's completely clueless.
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Take him to the field, collect some plants, bring it back alive." Well, he did all that.
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And I'm very grateful to Juan.
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And we have continued to work together.
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And so he's also getting up there in age.
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He's not that much younger than I am.
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And he's looking to retire, but he has vast knowledge of Amazonian flora, Amazonian medicine, just the whole Amazonian bio..
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And he's one of these people about which it's said, "When a medicine man dies, it's as though a library has burned down." He is that library.
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And he would not call himself a medicine man, but he's been immersed. He's really a scientist. He's unique.
15:48
He's got one foot in traditional medicine, traditional practices.
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Having grown up in Iquitos, he is been immersed in this.
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But then he also has training as a botanist.
16:00
And the thing is, his knowledge is vast.
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It's also completely up here.
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He does not write stuff down.
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He doesn't have that mindset.
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It's like, "Why write it down? It's already up here."
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And I'm like, "Juan, that's the point.
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You need to get it out there because the world needs this knowledge.
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You're not going to be around forever."
16:28
And so this project that we're working on has a couple of parts, many moving parts.
16:36
But a couple of main parts.
16:39
One of which is to do a series of documentaries about Amazonian traditional medicine and kind of the current state that it's in the post COVID, post ayahuasca tourism, post climate change, post globalization.
16:57
In the contemporary context, it's still very important to the people.
17:01
And we want to do these documentaries.
17:04
The first one of which we've completed.
17:07
And we showed that ESPD 55.
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And was very well received.
17:13
So this would be the first of six to eight documentaries.
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A lot of which would feature Juan and involve Juan, just kind of trying to record this knowledge.
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But do it in a dynamic way.
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Go to these villages in the area, go to the field and make it engaging.
17:37
And then the second phase of this ...
17:37
Or, I mean, it's not really linear.
17:42
But the another big part of it is that this herbarium at UNAP is a real gem.
17:52
And it's a typical third world university. It's run down.
17:56
It doesn't have very good funding.
17:59
It's kind of in need of help.
18:02
And we're trying to raise enough money to upgrade the herbarium and actually develop a digital herbarium.
18:12
Scan all the specimens in the herbarium.
18:14
There are about 100,000 specimens in the herbarium.
18:17
Only half of them are even mounted and classified.
18:23
A lot of them are still in their original collection bags.
18:27
And we've got the notes for it, but that's going to be a huge project.
18:32
We are actually very ambitious.
18:33
We're trying to raise $10 million to do this work.
18:38
And that's about what it's going to take.
18:40
And I think that's not an unrealistic goal.
18:44
And I think that based on the enthusiasm that we saw from the people of ESPD 55, many of whom are certainly in the position to substantially support this, I think we're going to make this goal.
19:00
And I think it's a very worthy, worthy project.
19:05
Because just I've always felt that to be able to attach information to a plant, by that very fact, enhances its value and provides a reason not to drive it into extinction. If we need one. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
19:25
Dennis McKenna: And so that's a three to five year project.
19:32
And that's going to take up most of our bandwidth for a while.
19:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Absolutely fascinating.
19:39
And things like that, I'm fascinated by is, you mentioned, ayahuasca.
19:45
This is a plant that emerged more than a million years ago, according to the research that I saw.
19:51
And there are other plants and ceremonies, you talk about west versus east.
19:56
And the whole idea of the Eleusinian mysteries in Greece, which Brian Muraresku was kind enough to sort of educate me on.
20:08
And then you see things like the doors of perception by Huxley.
20:13
And you see this sort of from the beginning right up until sort of the mid, let's call it 1960s. Right?
20:21
Lots of research being done on the very, very positive effects of psychedelics and psychoactive agents on a variety of conditions.
20:33
And then we had the door slam shut, by who I consider maybe the craziest human to ever occupy the oval office, Richard Nixon.
20:45
There's another guy who runs a close second to him.
20:47
But I think that Nixon was probably pretty crazy because he decided that he was going to have this war on drugs.
20:54
And what shattered me when I was reading it is that all of the research or much of the research was not only confiscated, it was disposed of.
21:05
And just, to me, that just doesn't make sense at all.
21:11
How to change your mind, which we were discussing prior to recording, was the first book that I had ever read that's by Michael Pollan.
21:18
I urge everyone listening or watching to read it.
21:22
It's a very interesting history of psychedelics, their potential, this attempt to shut them down for a variety of reasons.
21:31
And then the re-flowering of the research specifically around the Johns Hopkins research being done with our veterans.
21:39
And the way I look at it is, how could we not?
21:45
When we see the kinds of results that we're getting, how could we not be just incredibly supportive about this?
21:54
So what do you think was the tenor or the zeitgeist of those that time when the, let's call them, the establishment or the man or however you want to put it decided they were going to close down psychedelics.
22:11
And, of course, the great irony here is two of the most addictive drugs, alcohol and nicotine, are quite legal.
22:19
And psychedelics, from all the research that I have read, are nonaddictive. What was happening?
22:26
Dennis McKenna: Well, I mean, a good point.
22:30
Alcohol and tobacco are clearly the most destructive recreational quote unquote drugs that we have.
22:39
And there's been recent publications, especially by Dr.
22:39
David Nutt at Kings College, London.
22:48
These safety assessments.
22:50
He's really a leading researcher in this field assessing the relative safety.
22:55
At one of end of the spectrum is alcohol and tobacco.
22:59
At the other end of the spectrum, in terms of safety, is mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms.
23:06
They have virtually no real hazards, just long as they're used in a reasonable way.
23:14
I mean, every drug can be misused.
23:17
But I am fond of saying that there is no such thing as a bad drug.
23:23
There are plenty of bad ways to use drugs.
23:28
And so this is where the factors of setting and just understanding what you're doing, approaching it in an informed way, becomes very important because the idea is to minimize the harm, if any, maximize the benefit.
23:45
This is not such a silly idea.
23:48
And the proper use of psychedelics require appropriate setting, preparation.
23:56
They should be approached thoughtfully and respectfully.
23:59
I mean, it's possible to use them recreationally, whatever that means.
24:05
But you get the most benefits out of it if you take it seriously.
24:09
And as a person who has only recently crossed the threshold, if you will, I think you will appreciate this.
24:20
It's not a bad thing, Jim, that you waited till late in life to experience psychedelics.
24:28
Because I think part of this dynamic, the setting, the set is what you bring to it. The set is your mindset.
24:37
And the set is who you are, everything you've learned in life, what you know, and so on.
24:45
So a mature person who's had life experience is going to get a lot more out of these experiences for the first time than, say, an 18 year old or 17 year old, which I was.
24:58
And I got plenty out of my LSD experience. My first LSD experience.
25:04
My brother always told me, "Don't take LSD until you've, until you've read Psychology and Alchemy by CG Jung."
25:13
And I, of course, I mean, "Why? Why should I do that?"
25:17
Well, after I took LSD, I realized.
25:20
Of course, I ignored his advice.
25:22
After I took LSD, I realized what he was talking about.
25:26
That actually, that would've been a very good thing to have under my belt before I took psychedelics for the first time. But I digress. This is something I do. I tend to digress.
25:40
But I think to address your question, back in the sixties, his was entirely political. It was basically racist.
25:53
I mean, Nixon was an incredible racist.
25:55
I think this has become clear.
26:01
And the prohibition of these substances was essentially a chance to clamp down.
26:08
Because it was a time of turmoil, social turmoil, the war in Vietnam, the whole counter cultural movement, the hippies and all this.
26:18
So it was possible, and these people were pushing back. And I was among them.
26:25
I was one of them, pushing back against the sort of cultural means that the powers that be were trying to propagate.
26:37
And they were using the notion that these drugs were very dangerous and must be prohibited.
26:45
And they'll drive you crazy.
26:46
They'll make jump off buildings.
26:49
They cause chromosomal damage. All horse shit. I mean, yeah. They can be misused.
26:56
And you should not take psychedelics or any psychoactive substance at 70 miles an hour on the freeway.
27:06
Or these kinds of things. Just common sense.
27:09
But the idea was to create this perception that these drugs were dangerous, which made it okay to marginalize and target and persecute the people that were into them.
27:23
And my brother was fond of saying, he often said, "Yes, psychedelics are very dangerous, because they give you dangerous ideas."
27:34
And that's exactly what was going on.
27:37
And we can't have dangerous ideas that are outside the accepted norms of the authoritarian hegemony.
27:45
And so that's why they were prohibited.
27:50
It was purely a political thing.
27:52
There was no medical reason to do it.
27:56
All of the psychedelics were sort of blanket banned.
28:00
I mean, there was no distinction between LSD and these other psychedelics.
28:08
It was just a totally hysterical reaction.
28:11
And it was an authoritarian reaction.
28:14
It was an excuse to marginalize and persecute different demographics.
28:21
We saw the same thing going on with cannabis in the thirties, the same thing going on with cocaine.
28:27
I mean, I think cannabis, I think is quite benign. Generally. Cocaine is not so much.
28:38
But the point is, the decisions that were made to prohibit these things was not based on any medical or scientific evidence.
28:46
They were entirely political decisions. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
28:50
And what's interesting there is, the deeper I dive on many of these things, this reminds me of an example of the physicist David Baum, who came up with the hidden variables theory.
29:03
And a group of preeminent scientists led by Oppenheimer decided that, because he had attended a communist party meeting, and as a free market believer, I'm not a huge fan of communism.
29:17
But I am a huge fan of anyone being able to have the right to do or believe whatever they want to do and believe.
29:24
But they essentially conducted a defamation campaign against David, against his person, against his ideas. Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
29:35
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And there was this really chilling quote from Oppenheimer saying, "If we cannot disprove the theory, then we must disprove the man."
29:43
I might not be getting that right.
29:44
But they essentially decided that they were going to effectively ignore him.
29:49
And so, this idea that shocks a lot of people, that what we think of as sort of the height of enlightened scientific methods, right?
30:00
Often, way too often in my opinion, are dominated by completely different variables.
30:08
And those variables are societal. They are power trips.
30:12
They are all of these things.
30:13
And one of the questions that I wanted to get your opinion on is, at the time that this was happening, there were a number of researchers both here in the United States and Canada and in Europe who were highly credentialed in medicine, in psychiatry, in pharmacology, who knew that everything that the governments were saying was a lie.
30:37
Was it simply fear of persecution that made them not stand up and say, "Hey, wait a minute." Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
30:44
I think it's fear of persecution, in the sense that, most of these people are in academic contexts.
30:51
So funding and status and tenure and all these sort of leashes that society can put on people can be threatened.
31:04
And that's been the case for a long time in academics.
31:09
I mean, academia is, in some ways, one of the more corrupted institutions that we have to deal with.
31:17
This is one reason I never tried to get tenure, because I wasn't willing to play the game. And I wanted to teach.
31:26
And I taught a lot about psychedelics.
31:28
And I think my supervisors, at the time I was an adjunct professor, they never looked too closely at what I was teaching because my classes were always over enrolled. Right?
31:42
And so, "Well, that's a measure.
31:44
He must be doing some right.
31:46
So we'll leave him alone." But I was done.
31:48
But anyway, that's a personal thing.
31:50
But a lot of researchers, I think, particularly in neuroscience and psychiatry and pharmacology and this sort of thing, the motivations for many of these folks to go into these kinds of fields like neuroscience was really motivated by a desire to understand consciousness.
32:17
And some of them have had their own psychedelic experiences.
32:23
And that just increased that desire because they could see that they were tools.
32:29
Back in the fifties, before these things became stigmatized and banned and vilified, I mean, LSD was what there was.
32:43
And Sandos was making it available to researchers, psychiatrists, to pharmacologists, to clinicians.
32:50
And even to a few philosophers and things like that.
32:55
And LSD was really responsible for the birth of modern neuroscience.
33:03
It really is what transformed neuroscience, in some ways.
33:07
Because it was a tool, a molecular tool, that opened a window into some of the processes that were clearly associated with consciousness.
33:21
I mean, the idea originally in the fifties, the idea was, well, the LSD state is like schizophrenia.
33:31
It's a model of psychosis.
33:35
So and the term they used then were psychotomimetics. Psychosis mimicking.
33:42
The nomenclature for these things has gone through an evolution, but they were psychotomimetics and the state they induced is like psychosis.
33:53
So if a psychiatrist wants to know what his patients are experiencing, they can take LSD and have a model psychotic reaction, look at it from the inside.
34:05
Well, of course it's not.
34:08
It doesn't resemble psychosis.
34:10
I mean, but that was the thinking at the time.
34:14
And then people were actually having these experiences and coming back with these mystical revelations and all this insight.
34:22
And it's like, well, no, that doesn't really seem to fit.
34:26
But the idea was that LSD could be used as a probe to understand some of the molecular mechanisms of associated with these altered states, because number one, it looked like serotonin, which was becoming a neurotransmitter that was being studied.
34:48
Researchers knew it was important.
34:51
And secondly, researchers knew that it affected serotonin.
34:55
So that was primarily what it affected.
34:59
So really, neuroscience was sort of birthed into its modern form because of LSD.
35:10
And then that work continued and began to be used clinically very effectively for certain things, especially alcoholism and that kind of thing.
35:22
Humphrey Osmond's work in Saskatchewan with alcoholics, which can begin on the fifties and continued through the sixties, very promising work.
35:34
And, like you say, when they made the prohibition, it's not that the data was destroyed or disposed of, but it was just disregarded.
35:47
It was just marginalized.
35:49
It's out there somewhere.
35:53
But it was disregarded because these drugs, the criteria was, I mean, they're schedule one.
36:02
So the criteria was, they're extremely dangerous. They're addictive.
36:06
They have no possible medical use.
36:08
They have no value whatsoever. So ban them.
36:13
And that was what defined the schedule one drug.
36:19
And that basically was implemented in the states at the end of the seventies and through the state's disproportionate influence on international regulatory bodies, the UN convention on psychotropic substances just fell into line.
36:38
And these things were prohibited for at least 20 years. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Okay.
36:43
Dennis McKenna: And there was basic research going on. But in animal research.
36:50
Very, very little clinical research in the states.
36:53
Maybe a little bit in Europe.
36:55
But it wasn't really until Rick Strassman in the early nineties decided to investigate DMT, that's really what kind of forced the door open again on clinical research.
37:10
It opened it the little bit.
37:12
And he was interested, probably familiar with his work, right? Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yes.
37:17
Dennis McKenna: And he was interested in melatonin.
37:20
And melatonin is a pineal hormone that is a tryptamine. It's similar to DMT.
37:27
And he thought that maybe DMT had something to do with pineal function.
37:33
So he wrote a grant to NIDA, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and applied for a grant to give DMT to subjects and record their physiological response, and also their experiences. Right?
37:54
And I think one reason that he got that grant was that he was not claiming anything therapeutic about it.
38:04
He wasn't saying this is going to cure schizophrenia or depression or anything.
38:07
It's just an observational study.
38:09
What does this drug do to the brain, to states of consciousness, and so on?
38:15
It was a descriptive study.
38:17
So it was not it wasn't a red flag.
38:20
It was just, this is just data gathering. Here's this compound. Very simple compound.
38:25
We know it occurs in the brain.
38:28
So maybe it's related to things like schizophrenia.
38:31
And in his case, he thought pineal function because it does occur in the pineal gland.
38:39
It turns out that's probably not so important, what we know now.
38:43
But anyway, his work really began to reopen the door on clinical investigations.
38:51
And it didn't really get rolling then. So he did that work.
38:57
And interestingly, his work, the reports that people were making from these high doses, because it was a dose escalation study.
39:07
He gave it intravenously, went up to some very high doses.
39:12
And the reports that people were getting from these high doses was so bizarre that he thought, "I can't report this to NIDA. This is crazy.
39:22
That would be the end of my career. This stuff."
39:26
So he basically discontinued the study.
39:30
Sent his supply of DMT back to NIDA.
39:30
and went to live with a monastery for six months to just get his head around what was going on.
39:42
But he was truly a pioneer.
39:45
But it sort of, that was the catalyst, but it didn't really get rolling again until Roland Griffiths in this group at Johns Hopkins around 2006, got interested in psilocybin.
40:01
And particularly, for the end of life application.
40:05
Anxiety and depression at the end of life was their stated clinical target.
40:13
Can psilocybin reduce anxiety, depression in terminal patients. And guess what? Yes, it worked.
40:25
I mean, their results came out and people were having amazing experiences.
40:32
And mystical experiences.
40:34
So they don't talk about that that way in the literature.
40:38
They talk about personally meaningful experiences.
40:42
And people were having the most personally meaningful experiences of their lives in these sessions.
40:50
And the thing is, Roland's research and the way they structured these sessions and everything, it was rigorous.
40:59
There was nothing that was not solid science in this. Nothing.
41:05
Nothing woo-woo about it.
41:07
Very, very tightly structured clinical studies with quantitative measurements and all that.
41:13
So even the critics of this work had to say, "Well, you know what?
41:18
Roland and his group did a fantastic job.
41:21
They did a very, very solid science on this."
41:26
So it was very hard to ignore that.
41:31
And that really was the point at which the conversation began to change. It was around 2006.
41:41
There was Strassman's work and that started it.
41:46
But he couldn't really continue it.
41:50
And then Roland came along.
41:51
And that was where, I think, the conversation really shifted.
41:56
And people began to say, "Well, wait a minute.
41:59
We need to take another look at these things." Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
42:02
Dennis McKenna: And they really do show a lot of promise.
42:07
And now that we know, there is.
42:10
I mean, it's we know that they do.
42:13
And the reason that we know that they do, and a lot of this work has been accepted is, there has been very good science.
42:21
And now, other groups are doing this.
42:24
And I think there is a consensus in the neuroscience mental health community that we need better treatments.
42:35
Mental health is in crisis.
42:36
We do not have good treatments for things like PTSD and terminal anxiety at the end of life and major depressing disorder.
42:47
And all the things that we know psychedelics can be used to treat.
42:54
Neuroscience or medicine has relied on band-aids for so long, these psycho pharmaceuticals.
43:01
They don't really get to the heart of it.
43:04
They don't really resolve the problems.
43:06
They just help people get sort of numb to it.
43:10
But the underlying conditions are not resolved.
43:14
Psychedelics can actually help you get to the writ of the problem and become cured, actually. Get over it. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah. Yeah.
43:26
That is what drew me and my fascination with it, reading these studies and seeing, actually, that they were cured.
43:33
These were not band-aids.
43:34
These were not temporary situations. They were permanent. Dennis McKenna: Sure.
43:38
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And often in as few as two or three sessions, especially with end of life anxiety.
43:46
And the thing that fascinates me is, I'm a huge fan of Claude Shannon, who invented information theory.
43:55
And there's kind of a speculative theory that I have read about, you mentioned schizophrenia.
44:00
One study I read, looked at it speculatively as, potentially schizophrenia is filter failure.
44:08
As you know, our brain filters out, let's say we're getting a hundred pieces of data hit hitting our eyes every minute.
44:18
And we only are aware of 10. Right? Consciously.
44:22
And that could simply be a filter failure.
44:26
And then you look at psychedelics, you're mentioning LSD, but also psilocybin.
44:32
I saw one piece that I thought was fascinating where it said, basically this supplement, this of psilocybin or LSD,` is simply upping the amount of awareness of the things going on from maybe 10 to 20 or more.
44:51
And that made some sense to me. Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
44:54
Jim O'Shaughnessy: In terms of, I'm fascinated by being tuned in or tuned out.
45:02
I don't know if you're a big fan of Robert Anton Wilson. I love his work.
45:06
Dennis McKenna: Yes, course. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Okay. So.
45:10
Dennis McKenna: Back in the day.
45:11
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yes, absolutely.
45:13
He was 50, 60 years ahead of his time. Dennis McKenna: Right.
45:16
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And he was explaining why he had written a book that I actually just reread on the new inquisition, in which he was talking about people, in the name of science, trying to shut any speculative thing down.
45:32
And I was taken with the way he put it, because it really resonated with me.
45:38
It was, people, it's not that they just don't know, but they're not tuned in. Right?
45:47
And so it oftentimes, for example, now everyone is tuning in, so to speak, with these results that are being achieved at the various research facilities and elsewhere. Dennis McKenna: Sure.
46:00
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And as you point out, these results are being rigorously done in a very highly scientific method and people have got to sort of take them seriously.
46:11
It's interesting to me that we talk about psilocybin.
46:16
And you noted that the psilocybin cave paintings at Selva Passalacqua in Spain, they're from 6,000 or 4,000 BC.
46:27
And so it seems to me that this is the part where I always go, "What the heck? What is going on here?" We knew. The Greeks knew.
46:39
All of these ancient, either religions or societies.
46:45
Call them whatever you want.
46:47
But I mean, the Eleusinian mysteries was how long?
46:52
2,000 years before it was ultimately broken up and banned. Do you ...
46:57
Dennis McKenna: Well, go ahead with what you were going to say.
47:05
Jim O'Shaughnessy: No, I'm still just very curious as to, how did all of that knowledge that you referred to your friend in Brazil, is it maybe, because I was just reading last night, I'm going to have my own little diversion here.
47:26
About how many indigenous people, and this specifically was about the indigenous people of Australia.
47:33
I was learning that, I'd never knew this.
47:36
That they take their entire story, if you will, of their tribe, of their clan. It's always verbal.
47:45
And it's always secret, which I never knew.
47:50
And it is dispensed to the child, be it a male or female, over time when the elders feel that is necessary.
47:59
Do you think that sort of thing could account for why we are just now rediscovering all of this?
48:06
Dennis McKenna: Well, yeah.
48:08
I think that's certainly a part of it, is that these things are, by and large, not written down and they're transmitted through oral traditions.
48:19
And as societies, as indigenous societies, become impacted by global issues and outside context and all of this stuff, the integrity of their traditions, not just around psychoactive plants, but their culture in general, their relationship to nature, their knowledge of nature, these tend to be the things that are suppressed.
48:49
And that are not even necessarily an active attempt to suppress them, but just the cultural coherency falls apart.
49:00
I mean the people in these indigenous groups, they're very often tied very much to where they live, their habitats.
49:09
And that's where the plants are.
49:11
That's where the animals are that they know.
49:13
And as these habitats become impacted, destabilization by climate change, so-called development, outside groups encroaching on them and so on, very often the first knowledge that goes, the first knowledge that disappears, is the shamanic knowledge, the knowledge of the medicines and sort of the context in which that's used.
49:40
So that's how this knowledge disappears.
49:44
And that's why it's important to try to preserve it.
49:49
But you touched on a couple of points here that we could go on and on.
49:56
That are very, very close to my kind of my rap, if you will.
50:02
This idea of the filtering effect.
50:07
Aldous Huxley first articulated it, that it was the reducing valve.
50:12
Ordinary consciousness, you're absolutely right, is only possible because of these filtering mechanisms.
50:20
And the current buzzword in is the default mode network.
50:28
And this is a set of sort of mechanisms that keep us within a certain realm of ordinary consciousness essentially.
50:42
Because I like to call it the reality hallucination, in a certain way.
50:52
Because the reality hallucination is something that the brain takes in information from the outside, processes that with associations and memories and all sorts of things inside. Inside, outside.
51:07
These terms are very tricky, but for the moment we can use them.
51:11
And it comes up with a model of reality.
51:14
And the model of reality is an impoverished model.
51:18
And the reason it is is because it's there have been all these selective filters applied.
51:24
Because if everything came through, it'd just be a blooming, buzzing confusion.
51:30
So the brain selectively filters what comes in, constructs a comprehensible model of reality.
51:38
That's what we call the default mode network or the reality hallucination. It is a model. It's not reality.
51:47
Reality is out there somewhere, but it's some sort of representation of reality that makes it possible for us to function.
51:58
What psychedelics do is they temporarily disable the default mode network. They just blow it apart.
52:08
And your model of reality collapses.
52:11
And all of this information can then come in and be experienced and is accessible.
52:18
And that can be very scary, but it can also be very useful.
52:24
Because, in this default mode network, habitual behaviors and thoughts and so on, can become installed.
52:36
And you can get into feedback loops that are destructive.
52:41
That really need to be blown away.
52:44
And that's what the psychedelics can do.
52:47
It's literally, I think, in very much ways, it's literally like rebuilding, rebooting your computer.
52:55
You know how your computer can get all glitched up and it runs slower and there are problems. And so on.
53:02
You reset that thing and it runs smoother.
53:04
The same thing goes on with the psychedelics.
53:09
And because the default mode network the brain and the body, the brain, it's going to reestablish itself.
53:19
It's going to fall back together.
53:20
You're not destroying it.
53:23
You've temporarily disabled it, but that equilibrium will reestablish itself.
53:29
And it will reestablish itself in a way that a lot of the clutch that has built up has been eliminated.
53:37
So it runs more smoothly literally.
53:41
And I think the therapeutic utility of psychedelics is that, because they let you step out of this reference frame, they let you step out of this personal reference frame and look at your issues from a different perspective temporarily.
53:58
So your depression, your PTSD, your addiction, whatever the problem is.
54:05
And, of course it's usually a complex picture.
54:10
Usually if you're depressed, there are other things going on.
54:14
They don't happen just one thing.
54:17
But it lets you look at whatever is contributing to your unhappiness and your mental disorder.
54:27
And from a perspective that, by just being able to step out of it temporarily, in effect, you defuse it.
54:35
And you can come back into ordinary reality with this sort of reconstructed ...
54:35
It's really like taking the engine into the shop and, "Hey, give me a tune up." Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
54:50
Dennis McKenna: And then you function better after a while. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
54:55
Dennis McKenna: And some people are permanently helped by that.
54:58
Other people may have to go back to the well once in a while.
55:01
But once every few months or years.
55:05
So that's far more effective than taken an SSRI twice a day for the rest of your life, which doesn't really do much for you.
55:14
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right.
55:15
Dennis McKenna: So I think that's the nub of the therapeutic utility of psychedelics is this ability to let you reframe you're reference frame. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
55:27
Dennis McKenna: And get the in insights from that. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
55:31
I love the term reality hallucination.
55:34
I call that ground state reality. Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Exactly.
55:38
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And ground state reality is what the majority of sentient beings on the planet collectively agree the most on at any given time. Dennis McKenna: Right.
55:48
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And there are all sorts of other realities.
55:50
And perhaps the psychedelics are inhibiting the inhibitors of our brain.
55:57
And letting in that additional information and allowing us a different perspective.
56:04
Like you say, like a tuneup, which I think is a fascinating way to look at it.
56:11
What do you think is next? I'm an investor.
56:14
And I run our family office.
56:18
And I see a huge uptick in the proposals from people having to do with psychedelics, many of them interesting.
56:29
But some of the hurdles that people say is, "Well, you can't patent them." Right?
56:36
Because these are naturally occurring substances.
56:39
And if you were the emperor here, if you will, because I'm going to ask you about that in a little bit, too.
56:48
But if you were the emperor and you got to say, where we are now, we've certainly learned of the therapeutic effects of psychedelics.
56:58
We've certainly learned that they can be extraordinarily helpful where more traditional, as you mentioned, SSRI inhibitors have really not been.
57:09
When you look at that research, the placebo often does as well as the shipped drug. Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
57:16
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And that is certainly not the case in psychedelics.
57:18
So if we're at this kind of plateau, I think, where people, what you would call traditional organizations like the Ivy leagues, like the AMA, et cetera, are opening themselves a bit to, "Okay, this might be something good." Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
57:38
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Where would you like to see it go from here?
57:41
Dennis McKenna: Well, it's hard to look too far into the future.
57:49
But I see a few things going on.
57:51
I see for one thing, you brought up the good point that a lot of these things are difficult to patent.
57:59
And I'm not sure patenting is a good thing for medicines that are really ancient.
58:04
I think there are ethical issues involving that.
58:08
That said, there's no lack of companies that are trying to develop novel analogs, novel compounds, novel mechanisms and so on, so that they can patent these things.
58:22
And you're a capitalist, I'm basically a capitalist.
58:26
I understand that the profit motive can move forward research.
58:33
And so, in general, I'm in favor of that.
58:35
I'm in favor of doing the research.
58:37
I think that the companies that want to patent, either the compounds or the protocols, well, they're going to do that.
58:48
I mean, they're not going to ask me or you if that's okay.
58:51
They're going to move within the regulatory framework.
58:54
I do think they have a tremendous ethical responsibility to give back to the indigenous people, to find a way to honor and benefit indigenous people who have been the stewarding knowledge for literally thousands of years.
59:12
And always tend to be the ones that are pushed aside, marginalized.
59:18
This is true in the history of drug discovery when it comes to natural products.
59:23
And so the capitalists, the pharmaceutical companies come in and say, "Thank you very much.
59:30
We'll take this knowledge.
59:31
We'll build a drug out of it.
59:34
Give you maybe 2% of the profits, if that much."
59:40
Well, that needs to change.
59:42
I really think that that needs to change.
59:45
And I think it's interesting that psychedelics, among all the things that might be developed this way, they're also, if the capitalists themselves will take the psychedelics, they might have an ethical revelation and realize, "Hey, we need to give something back." So that can be helpful.
1:00:08
But on the other side, so I think the industry is bifurcating toward, one trajectory, it's going to be clinical studies.
1:00:20
Very bio-medically oriented in hospitals or wherever.
1:00:25
And probably available to people that can afford it.
1:00:30
And not many people are going to be able to afford it. So that's a problem.
1:00:36
And there needs to be mechanisms to find ways that people who can't go to a hospital and pay 30 grand to have a structured psilocybin session can get access to these things.
1:00:51
So then we come to the natural medicines, things like mushrooms and ayahuasca and these sorts of things that are used traditionally.
1:01:01
And still, effectively, they're prohibited or their restrictions are much more.
1:01:10
But I think something is going on in Oregon, for example.
1:01:14
Oregon recently legalized psilocybin mushrooms and psilocybin for clinical use.
1:01:22
So you can go to Oregon and open a psilocybin therapy clinic.
1:01:27
And I think that's a good thing.
1:01:28
I think that would make it accessible to a lot more people.
1:01:33
I think that what I'd like to see is decriminalization of these natural substances, which is happening.
1:01:45
There are pitfalls because some of these are now endangered species.
1:01:50
And they're endangered, in part, because we love them too much.
1:01:55
And there is over harvesting and there's impact on the production infrastructures for things like ayahuasca and the Boga and these things that grow more slowly.
1:02:08
It does not apply so much to mushrooms because you can grow mushrooms by the megaton. And that's a good thing. There's no shortage.
1:02:17
But what I'd like to see happen is these de-crim movements. Need to be thoughtful.
1:02:24
They need to proceed carefully when it comes to things like peyote which, if you've read Michael Pollan's latest book, he talks about this.
1:02:34
The indigenous people are saying, "This is really endangered.
1:02:40
Just please leave it alone. Let us be the stewards.
1:02:47
There are other psychedelics out there.
1:02:50
Respect the fact that this is an endangered plant and that it's our tradition, our legacy."
1:02:56
I'm totally in favor of that.
1:02:58
I'm not in favor of, I mean, something they've said is, "Well, keep it illegal."
1:03:03
I do not believe that any plant or fungus or any other organism should be illegal.
1:03:10
But I think that the community as a whole interested in this could say, "It's not illegal, but it's protected.
1:03:18
And we will, as a community, agree that peyote, Boga, and ayahuasca should be protected in some way.
1:03:28
Not illegal, but we should be mindful of the demand and how we use it."
1:03:33
What I'd like to see, Jim, actually is these centers that are growing up that are happening in Oregon.
1:03:41
I'd like to see these things take shape, take root, if you will, in many states.
1:03:50
And I think a lot of them already exist.
1:03:52
But they operate underground.
1:03:56
So they're not known about.
1:03:57
But create a legal situation where those centers can come out of the shadows and operate in the open.
1:04:08
And function essentially, not necessarily as psychedelic therapy centers. So that as a focus.
1:04:15
Function more like wellness centers where people can go and get yoga, get nutritional counseling, get a number of alternative health benefits, among which could be a guided one or more guided psychedelic sessions with a qualified therapist or a shaman.
1:04:38
I think that the traditional healers should be given credit and an ability.
1:04:45
They don't have to be a certified psychoanalyst or anything, but they know how to use these things in a ceremonial context.
1:04:53
So I'd like to see these centers form in the open, under light regulation.
1:05:01
Probably some regulations necessary, but under light regulation.
1:05:06
And form alliances with indigenous groups that produce these things, that are the stewards of these things.
1:05:14
So rather than people going to South America to take ayahuasca, which I have fostered and I've organized those things.
1:05:25
But I'm having second thoughts as to whether that's really ethical.
1:05:29
I'd rather see alliances formed with indigenous communities to produce these medicines and to bring those up to North America and Europe.
1:05:40
Bring the medicine to the people, rather the people to the medicine.
1:05:44
And I think that could be a viable thing because when you have people going down to South America or Africa or wherever they're using these things, just the economic disparities and the bringing these different cultures together, can have adverse effects on the community.
1:06:08
And in South America, you get this situation where you've got these superstar, ayahuasc-erums.
1:06:14
And they make lots of money. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:06:18
Dennis McKenna: Sometimes that's shared with the community and other times it's not.
1:06:23
And so that leads to resentment and so on.
1:06:26
So we need to work on this.
1:06:29
And actually, one of the presentations at ESPD 55 addressed this very question.
1:06:37
But ICEERs, which is an organization you may have heard of.
1:06:41
I'm a real fan of ICEERs.
1:06:45
You know who I'm talking about? Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yes. Yeah. Dennis McKenna: Yeah. ICEERs dot ...
1:06:51
I will put it here if I can ...
1:06:54
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I think it's dot org. Yeah? Dennis McKenna: Dot org. Yeah. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:06:59
Dennis McKenna: International Center for Ethno-botanical Education, Research and Service.
1:07:04
And they're doing tremendous work and trying to protect these natural psychedelics, particularly ayahuasca and Boga, which are the most pressured.
1:07:18
And they just do great work and people should listen to what they presented in ESPD 55, because they've really framed this whole dilemma very well, I think. And yeah. I'm a big fan. I'm on the board.
1:07:34
And I really support what they do.
1:07:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, this is absolutely fascinating.
1:07:39
I think we're living in a very interesting era. Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
1:07:43
Jim O'Shaughnessy: In which you start seeing, I'm a big fan of the Tao Te Ching and the Gita.
1:07:50
And you all of a sudden are starting to see quantum physicists sort of saying, "Yeah, you know the Tao over here and the Gita? Yeah. They're mostly right." Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:01
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And now with the rediscovery, or I shouldn't say re-discovery, with the bringing these ideas into the light for many, many more people, I think is a very positive thing.
1:08:17
And so I am very thankful that we've had this opportunity to chat.
1:08:23
I always end this podcast with a question. And it is simply this.
1:08:28
If we were going to wave a wand and we were going to make you the emperor of the world for a day, you couldn't hurt anyone.
1:08:34
You couldn't kill anyone.
1:08:36
You couldn't put anyone in an education camp.
1:08:39
But what you could do is incept an idea in their brains.
1:08:45
When they woke up the next morning, they would think it was their idea.
1:08:49
And they would immediately start doing, acting, learning this particular way or doing this particular thing.
1:08:57
What two things would you implant in our world's population?
1:09:01
Dennis McKenna: God, I hate these questions.
1:09:05
A couple of things, I think.
1:09:09
I would say, don't accept anything on faith. Think for yourself.
1:09:18
Faith is, in my opinion, and I grew up Catholic.
1:09:23
So I was bludgeoned by the need to have faith from earliest stage.
1:09:28
Faith is often an impediment to clear thinking.
1:09:32
Faith is being asked to accept a bunch of principles or ideas without any evidence. Just accept it.
1:09:41
Well, that's anti-science, to my belief.
1:09:46
I think that if you're being asked to believe something, there should be evidence to support it.
1:09:54
And faith is often misused this way. That's the other thing. So have faith.
1:10:01
If you're going to have faith in something, have faith in your own God given ability to think for yourself.
1:10:09
I think that's really important.
1:10:15
And then, I guess, the other side of that is, when it comes to psychedelics, interestingly, and to my mind, this is what validates them is, you don't have to have faith. It's not required.
1:10:29
In fact, be as skeptical as you want.
1:10:32
What you have to have is courage.
1:10:36
You have to have the courage to sit down and drink the cup or smoke the pipe or do whatever it is and let yourself go.
1:10:47
And that, ultimately, comes back to faith in yourself.
1:10:51
I wouldn't call it faith. I'd call it trust. Trust in yourself.
1:10:56
Know yourself well enough to know, "I can do this.
1:10:58
I'm up to this experience.
1:11:02
And I have the courage to approach. To jump off the cliff." In a certain way.
1:11:10
Knowing that it's going to be a soft landing.
1:11:12
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right.
1:11:13
Dennis McKenna: And so that would be my revelation.
1:11:21
And the other thing is, if you're going to do that, prepare to surrender. Don't resist.
1:11:28
That's why, again, that comes back to set and setting.
1:11:30
Put yourself in a situation where you know you're safe.
1:11:35
Nobody is threatening you. You're in a safe place.
1:11:39
Because remember, you're going to blow this default mode network to smithereens. Temporarily.
1:11:46
So you have to be willing to surrender. Literally.
1:11:49
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I love both of those.
1:11:52
Nullius in verba is the watchword of the Royal Society founded by Isaac Newton.
1:11:58
Take no one's word for it.
1:12:00
So I love the, think for yourself.
1:12:02
And I, too, they tried to raise me Catholic.
1:12:06
I had a very intelligent priest once say to me," I don't think we're going to make it with you." Dennis McKenna: Yeah.
1:12:14
My priest came to that conclusion, too.
1:12:18
It was like, "You're hopeless. You're going to hell."
1:12:23
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
1:12:24
Well, again, back to Robert Anton Wilson, he said that everyone, the Catholic church programs a correct answer machine in your brain. Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Exactly.
1:12:33
Jim O'Shaughnessy: The correct answer rarely is the correct answer. So. Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Yeah.
1:12:39
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Anyway.
1:12:40
Dennis McKenna: I, too, benefited from an intelligent and kind priest. And they're out there.
1:12:45
I think they're very rare, but I did benefit from a very intelligent priest with a Jesuit background.
1:12:54
And- Jim O'Shaughnessy: It's almost always Jesuits. Almost always Jesuits.
1:12:57
Dennis McKenna: It's always Jesuits.
1:12:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right. Right.
1:13:00
Dennis McKenna: And as a result of that, I have fond memories of that.
1:13:05
Cause basically, the same kind of thing.
1:13:06
I think we reached a point where we said, "Well, I'm not going to convince you. But that's okay, son."
1:13:12
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
1:13:13
Dennis McKenna: "You're not going to hell. Don't worry about it." Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah. Yeah.
1:13:19
We are heretics and proud of it. Dennis McKenna: Exactly. Exactly.
1:13:22
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Dennis, this has been absolutely tremendous chatting with you.
1:13:25
Thank you so much for taking the time.
1:13:27
Now, where can people find you if they donate, if they want to ...
1:13:30
Dennis McKenna: Well, you can find me at McKenna Academy. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Okay.
1:13:33
Dennis McKenna: You can write to me at dennis@mckenna. academy, mckenna. academy.
1:13:40
And let me know when all this is up there, because I got a whole social media team that supports my work.
1:13:47
So we'll get it out there.
1:13:49
We will saturate the meme space or the podcast, whatever.
1:13:55
The social media space with this.
1:13:57
This has been a really pleasurable and really good talk, Jim. I really appreciate it.
1:14:03
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And as do I, Dennis.
1:14:05
Thank you so much for your time.