If you’re a regular TTBOOK listener, you know we have a few side projects. Luminous has been my passion project for several years. It’s a podcast about the science and philosophy of psychedelics, and every couple of months we release a new interview with a major figure in the psychedelic field. These interviews are too long - typically, 35-50 minutes - for the radio show, so they have their own podcast feed.
Most of the public conversations about psychedelics revolve around their therapeutic potential – treating mental disorders like depression and PTSD - but my interest is more philosophical. The most powerful psychedelic experiences raise profound questions about the nature of consciousness. They often have a mystical quality. People talk about the sense of merging with the larger cosmos, and some describe these experiences as “realer than real” – piercing the veil of everyday experience. There’s a fierce argument about whether to take these accounts literally or just to see them as hallucinations – a debate I wrote about in Nautilus magazine.
I love doing interviews that lead to more questions than answers – and with psychedelics, the boundaries between science, philosophy and mystical experience tend to break down. I don’t want to romanticize psychedelics. They are powerful drugs that can lead to very challenging experiences. I’ve had some myself, and so has my guest in this week’s Luminous episode, the eminent German philosopher Thomas Metzinger. But he also believes modern societies have an ethical imperative to create a “culture of consciousness,” and he says mind-altering substances offer one path forward.
You'll find dozens of interviews about psychedelics on our website at ttbook.org/luminous, and I hope you're subscribing to the Luminous podcast feed. You’ll meet a lot of amazing people, including Gul Dolen, the neuroscientist who’s given MDMA to octopuses; Erik Davis talking about the history of LSD in the psychedelic underground; and the pioneering researcher Roland Griffiths in one of his final – and heartbreaking - interviews before he died of cancer.
– Steve
