Psychedelics: Shamans, the philosophy of Harry Potter and the neuroscientific turn

2026-02-18T15:03:00+00:00

Tim is away this week, so we’re dipping into the MOLAD archive for a classic episode from 2024. Culture is increasingly interested in psychedelic drugs. Whether it’s Silicon Valley execs micro-dosing LSD to turbocharge their meetings, Americans doing ayahuasca weekends in Mexico, or rafts of studies suggesting ketamine can really help in treating depression, we’re all taking drugs much more seriously than at any time since the 1960s counterculture. But what does this all mean? Should we welcome this as simply another frontier in medical science, or is it occult and anti-Christian? Have believers been wrong all along in their traditional hostility to mind-altering substances? What is at stake with our spiritual lives when we start to fiddle around with chemicals in the brain?

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Psychedelics: Shamans, the philosophy of Harry Potter and the neuroscientific turn

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