The path of the psychedelic renaissance has largely touched on the aspects of therapy, personal growth, and initiation rites, but now, the relationship between psychedelics and creativity is being studied more and more. Can psychedelics really increase intellect, novelty, and problem solving?

In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. Bruce Damer: astrobiologist with a long history of work at NASA, and now the president and co-founder of the Center for MINDS, a new nonprofit researching the best ways to improve creativity and problem solving.

He talks about how we’re losing our best creative minds to hyper-specialization, and while there is lots of research pointing to psychedelics as creativity-enhancers, we need to develop frameworks and protocols to be able to measure exactly how that works, and the best ways to encourage better results. The Center for MINDS is sponsoring research while running its own three year project studying creativity in a naturalistic setting, and aims to answer: How do we unlock more genius? What’s the main driver for novel thinking?

He discusses:

His path to psychedelics, including his time with ‘endo-tripping’: training his mind to trip without any external substances
The importance of adding ‘set up’ to set and setting, representing one’s intentions and preparatory work up until that point
The tale of his extraordinary ayahuasca experience where he journeyed together with Mama Ayahuasca all the way to the beginning of life on earth
His theory on the real origin of life, and why the ‘survival of the fittest’ framework shouldn’t be our North Star
The absolute necessity of mentorship from elders

and more!

The steps the Center for MINDS will take in studying psychedelics and creativity will largely be steered by people’s personal stories, so please share yours with them by filling out their survey. What has worked for you? What is your personal protocol? For links, head to the show notes page.

63. Unpacking LA Unified School District's AI Chatbot Debacle w/ Fonz Mendoza