Future Primitive

This is a part two of our interview with Richard Doyle.

Click here to listen to part one of this interview.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Richard Doyle earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. He was the Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow in History and Social Science of the Life Sciences at MIT in 1993. Professor of Rhetoric, Doyle holds appointments in English, Science Technology & Society and the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State University and was Visiting Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric in 2003.

Doyle teaches courses in the history and rhetoric of emerging technosciences – sustainability, space colonization, biotechnology, nanotechnology, psychedelic science, information technologies, biometrics – and the cultural and literary contexts from which they sprout. Professor Doyle has published two books: On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences (Stanford, 1997) and Wetwares:Experiments in PostVital Living( Minnesota, 2003) – in a putative trilogy about emerging transhuman knowledges. These knowledges and practices, linked to molecular biology, artificial life, nanotechnology, psychedelic and information technologies render the experiential distinctions between living systems and machines frequently dubious and often indiscernible. This excited and confused rhetorical membrane between humans and an informational universe nonetheless broadcasts a clear message: humans, in co-evolution with the technical matrices transforming the planet, find themselves in an evolutionary ecology that is as urgent as it is experimental.

Continuing his collaborative work on the “transhuman imperative”, Doyle ( aka mobius) has now completed the trilogy with a scholarly book about archaic and contemporary psychedelic media technologies and the evolution of mind: The Ecodelic Hypothesis: Plants, Rhetoric and the Evolution of The Noösphere, currently in press with University of Washington. Other current projects include a book, Admixtures: Dialogues After Genomics with Anthropologist Mark Shriver. The Admixtures Project has grown The Penn State Center for Altered Consciousness, currently investigating the genetics and phenomenology of legally altered consciousness with the help of a flotation tank.

Doyle directed the Penn State Composition Program from 2004-2006, and serves as Expert, Wetwares and Human/Machine interaction for international organizations and a volunteer to the Penn State Center for Sustainability. More about mobius’ work and teaching can be found by browsing his web site.

Richard speaks with Joanna about language and the ecstasy of creativity, ego-death as a revelatory practice, eco-humility, Timothy Leary, freedom & Imagination…

Introductory music: “Amazon Beginnings” (At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, soundtrack) by Zbigniew Preisner

You can listen to PART TWO of this interview here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jennifer Palmer is the news editor of Reality Sandwich and Community Director of Evolver – two dream jobs merged into one.  She is a writer, DJ and internet philosopher who goes by the name TRUE online. Her blog, BRANDTRUEBOY http://www.brandtrueboy.com, started as an art experiment in 2002, in which she posted as three fictitious characters that she passed off as “real” people who emailed, commented and chatted with other bloggers. Her current projects include willing the (r)evolution with love, writing a novel, honing her Twitter stream skills and building the dopest vinyl based beat library in NYC.

Jennifer speaks with Joanna about the co-creation of reality, opening to interconectedeness, love as the strongest psychedelic, Gaia and the conciousness shift… among other topics

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Dr. Rick Strassman is a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry with a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research. Dr. Strassman was the first person in the United States after twenty years of intermission to embark in human research with psychedelic, or entheogenic substances.

rickstrassman.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Part 2 of an interview with Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). The second interview is about the Psychedelics and Ecology MAPS Bulletin, volume 19, number 1, edited by David Jay Brown.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rick Doblin studied with Stan Grof, M.D., and was in the first group to become certified as holotropic breathwork practitioners. His dissertation was on “The Regulation of the Medical Use of Psychedelics and Marijuana,” and his master’s thesis focused on the attitudes and experiences of oncologists concerning the medical use of marijuana. His undergraduate thesis was a twenty-five year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences. He has also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study to Tim Leary’s Concord Prison experiment.

In 1986, Rick founded MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise “healthy” people, and to also become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Margaret De Wys is a professor at Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts as well as a composer and sound installation artist.
A dramatic shift in her life set her on a pilgrimage to Ecuador and to becoming a world traveler and explorer dedicated to the preservation and transmission of traditional wisdom in the modern world. She has recently been published, her book came out in January 2009: Black Smoke: A Woman’s Journey of Healing, Wild Love and Transformation in the Amazon which chronicles her encounter with a Shuar master of medicina milenaria who guided her into a world of potent visionary plants, harrowing initiations and ritual purification.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Stephen Harrod Buhner is an Earth poet and the award-winning author of ten books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal
medicine. He lectures yearly throughout the United States on herbal medicine, the sacredness of plants, the intelligence of Nature, and the states of mind necessary for successful habitation of Earth. His website Gaian Studies is a non-profit organization exploring – and participating with – the non-linear intelligence of nature. Stephen’s work has been widely published in North America and Europe and his most recent works are entitled The Secret Teaching of Plants: The Intelligence of Heart in Direct Perception of Nature and Healing Lyme: Natural Healing and Prevention of Lyme Borrelosis and its related Co-infections.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rocky Caravelli is the primary facilitator and founder of Awakening in the Dream house, an innovative treatment and rehabilitation center near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that uses ibogaine, an entheogenic alkaloid of the iboga plant. He worked at the Ibogaine Association for 1 year and has run the Dream House for 2 1/2 years. He also spent 2 years providing treatments in the underground US community.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jodie Evans has worked on behalf of community, social-justice, environmental, and political causes for more than thirty years. As Director of Administration in former California Governor Jerry Brown’s cabinet and staff, Jodie championed environmental causes, resulting in breakthroughs in wind and solar technology and worked to bring historic diversity into the staff and appointments. As Manager of Governor Brown’s 1992 Presidential Campaign, Jodie instituted a cap on financial contributions of $100, resulting in a stronger push for campaign finance standards. Jodie has traveled extensively on behalf of global peace. Since the start of the Iraq war, Jodie has traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Jordan on several occasions. She is the co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement which has an international membership of 150,000.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Also known as Mountain Girl, Carolyn was a Merry Prankster and the wife of Jerry Garcia. In 1964 she met Neal Cassady who introduced her to Ken Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name “Mountain Girl”. She quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and was romantically involved with Kesey. She later met and married Jerry Garcia.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and advocate of the use of psychedelic substances for enriching people’s intellectual, psychological and spiritual beliefs through the psychedelic experience.
John Lash is the author of Not in His Image and Quest for the Zodiac, co-founder and principal author of the Metahistory.org and one of the foremost exponents of the power of myth to direct and shape an individual’s life, as well as history itself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kajuyali Tsamani (COL) – Shaman, initiated by Bernardo Moscote, Master Shaman of the Kogi Nation, indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Stanislave Grof is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of altered states of consciousness for purposes of healing, growth, and insight. Grof received the VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Vaclav Havel in Prague on October 5, 2007. He developed a form of psychotherapy called Holotropic Breathwork believed to allow access to nonordinary states of consciousness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jeremy Narby is anthropologist and writer who spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. Narby has written three books, as well as sponsored an expedition to the rainforest for biologists and other scientists to examine indigenous knowledge systems and the utility of Ayahuasca in gaining knowledge. Since 1989, Narby has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planete.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Psychotherapist, writer and researcher who has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness since graduate school when he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. He is the co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational and research organization dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Dieter Hagenbach is the president and founder of the Gaia Media Foundation, a non profit organization founded in 1993 and based in Basel, Switzerland, which conveys a holistic and up to date understanding of the potential of the human consciousness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download