Expanding Mind

Host Erik Davis explores his personal history of “meditation"—including teenage stoner trances, voices in the head, and Zen anti-authoritarianism.

Religious scholar Diana Pasulka talks about anomalous cognition, 2001 monoliths, disclosure, future truths, absurd Christianity, and her book American Cosmic (Oxford).

A talk with religious scholar Diana Pasulka about UFOs, scientific believers, book encounters, elite cabals, studying weirdness, and her new book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (Oxford).

Author and plant behavior researcher Monica Gagliano talks about courage, scientific blindness, plant spirits, and her new book Thus Spoke the Plant (North Atlantic).

Culture critic Mark Dery talks about Surrealism, the gay voice, penny dreadfuls, and his new biography of Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous (Little Brown).

Martial artist and psilocybin explorer Kilindi Iyi talks about African martial arts, high dose psilocybin work, African-American psychedelia, Dr. Strange, and the metaphysics of darkness.

Canadian cultural observer Peter Limberg talks about Stoicism, philosophical sandboxes, the Intellectual Explorers Club, making uncertainty sexy, and navigating the conflicts between today's memetic tribes.

Nurse practitioner and psychedelic therapist Julie Megler talks about integration circles, hierarchy vs. community, ketamine therapy, somatic work, and the philosophy behind her new East Bay clinic Sage Integrative Health.

Poet, journalist, and professor Nicholas Powers talks about festival politics, race and psychedelia, dreads, tokenism, and his book The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street (UpSet Press).

Bay Area conceptual artist Lindsay Tunkl talks about confronting death, therapy as art, pre-apocalypse counseling, humor, and her book When You Die You Will Not Be Scared to Die (Parallax Press).