Would the full deregulation of psychedelics be a good thing?

In today’s podcast, author Jay Michaelson and I discuss the rapidly evolving legal and cultural landscape of psychedelics, including their potential fast-tracking under the new Trump/Musk/RFK regime. Will deregulation — long a goal of advocates — make it more difficult to responsibly integrate these powerful substances into society? We also explore broader societal concerns, such as the erosion of democracy, systemic inequality, and the tension between technological advancement and cultural decay. I hope you enjoy it!

Michaelson is the author of ten books, including The Secret That Is Not A Secret and the National Jewish Book Award-winning The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth. He is the Field Scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality and will be a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in Spring 2025. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought, a JD from Yale, among other degrees. He clerked for Judge Merrick Garland. As a journalist, his work explores the intersections of politics, religion, and ethics, appearing in Rolling Stone, The Forward, and his Substack, Both/And. He was also the Supreme Court columnist for The Daily Beast. Michaelson blends Jewish, Buddhist, and secular mindfulness traditions, frequently teaching at universities, companies, and religious institutions.

Jay Michaelson: Official Website

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Recently, investigative journalist and MAGA mainstay Laura Loomer was "deplatformed" on Twitter/X by Elon Musk, for comments about the H1B visas. Loomer describes herself as a "free speech absolutist" whose book, Loomered, chronicles how she was previously censored and banned by tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and even UberEats. For many Leftists, this seemed a big "I told you so" moment: it was obvious to many on the Left that Trump was an opportunist whose alliegiance lies with the billionaire class. For Loomer and other MAGA members, there is a dawning sense of betrayal and perhaps the beginning of class consciousness, as it becomes clear that Trump's alignment with Musk could lead to a system of technocratic control without the free speech and support of American workers they were anticipating. The rift between the MAGA base and the tech billionaires who joined the campaign recently could be a bump in the road or a portent of more serious ruptures to come.   https://x.com/LauraLoomer

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BRETT SCOTT. Like everyone else, I notice the skyrocketing value of Bitcoin compared to anything else. On the one hand, feel uneasy about it, yet, on the other, I wonder if I should invest my paltry life savings into the stuff. Bitcoin seems to defy any economic law of gravity to keep going up, and up, unattached to anything tangible or real. To address my uneasiness, I spoke with Brett Scott, who writes the Altered States of Monetary Consciousness newsletter and is the author of a few books, including "Cloud Money: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets and The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money". Brett is a friend, and one of my go-to people when I feel confused — bamboozled? — about cryptocurrencies and other money-related stuff. He helps set me straight. 

Buy 'Cloud Money: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and War for Our Wallets"

Subscribe to Brett’s Substack Newsletter: https://brettscott.substack.com/ 

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JONATHAN TAPLIN is a writer, film producer and scholar. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016 in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival five times.

HIs new book "The End Of Reality" is available everywhere books are sold!

Official Website:

https://www.jontaplin.com/

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THOM HARTMANN: I always enjoy my conversations with the political analyst and ecologist Thom Hartmann. A progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host, Hartmann also writes a great Substack newsletter, The Hartmann Report. He's a New York Times bestselling author of 24 books. I particularly enjoyed his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which inspired Leonardo Di Caprio’s film The 11th Hour (in which Thom appears), as well as the the movie Ice On Fire. You can learn about his many books and storied career on his website.

In this conversation, we discuss the fall-out from the election: Where we are now and what may happen next, and how accelerating warming and the environmental crisis could influence the near-future of civilization.

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CURTIS YARVIN: Software designer, intellectual and political theorist, Yarvin has become famous in some ways and perhaps infamous in other ways, depending on where you sit, as a philosopher of the neo-reactionary or "dark enlightenment" movement who's been credited by The New Republic and Vox and other publications for inspiring Peter Thiel and JD Vance with some of their more extreme ideas around monarchy and technocracy. Essentially, the necessity of shifting from democracy to something that's more authoritarian or autocratic.  

Curtis and I have very differing opinions and ideas about so many things, and therefore it was interesting to have this dialog with him. I hope you enjoy it.

Curtis Yarvin's Substack Newsletter:

https://graymirror.substack.com/about

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MELIK KAYLAN has written about international politics and culture for the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Forbes for more than two decades. He has regularly reported from conflict zones throughout the world, from the North Korean border to the Caucasus, the Middle East, and the former Iron Curtain countries.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/

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Simon Ostrovsky is a PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent and an award-winning freelance news and documentary producer. In 2023 Simon was honored with a DuPont-Columbia Award and a citation from the Overseas Press Club of America for his coverage of Ukraine following Russia’s full scale invasion. He led the first American TV crew into Bucha after its liberation in April of 2022 and produced a series of reports on the atrocities perpetrated during the Russian occupation of the Kyiv region. His series, "Russian Roulette", was nominated for two Emmys and went to over 100 episodes that have been viewed more than 35 million times. David Carr of the New York Times called his work “remarkable” and VICE News liked his dispatches so much they applied the template to their reporting from around the world, giving it the raw feel they're known for today.

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Matt Stoller is the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book "Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy", which Business Insider called “one of the year’s best books on how to rethink capitalism and improve the economy.” David Cicilline, Chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, has called Stoller’s work “an inspiration.” Stoller is a former policy advisor to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. He also worked for a member of the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives during the financial crisis. While a staffer, he wrote a provision of law mandating a third party audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending activities. 

He also helped cut part of a $20 billion subsidy to large financial institutions. His 2012 law review article on the foreclosure crisis, The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship, predicted the rise of autocratic political forces, and his 2016 Atlantic article, How the Democrats Killed their Populist Soul, helped inspire the new anti-monopoly movement. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler. Stoller writes the monopoly-focused Substack newsletter BIG with tens of thousands of subscribers:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

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Chloe Macintosh is the founder and CEO of Kama, the #1 destination for sexual education and sexual exploration. Kama is a community and app that launched in 2020 with the mission to bring great Sex and Intimacy Education to every body. She is also a Venture Partner at Felix Capital.

Before Kama, Chloe was the Chief Creative Officer for the Soho House Group. She co-founded Made.com in 2010, which IPO’d just under 1B in 2021. She spent the first 9 years of her career as Associate Partner at Norman Foster.

Chloe recently moved to Ibiza, after 25 years in London, and she hosts Sexual Wellness Workshops and Explorative Retreats. 

https://kama.co/ 

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Known for his highly melodic, folk and psychedelia-inflected indie pop, Alex Ebert kept himself busy from the early days of his career, fronting the punkier Ima Robot for several years before founding his more famous second group, the nearly dozen-member Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Ebert continues to be a prolific performer and publishes a very popular Substack newsletter: @BadGuru.

 @alexebert‬

 https://substack.com/@badguru

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