Michael Pollan here. I wanted to let you know that there’s a new season of the Altered States podcast launching today. The reporters and producers this season have dug up some fascinating and important psychedelics stories. In this first episode, I’m interviewed by Altered States’s host Arielle Duhaime-Ross about a study at Johns Hopkins and NYU that started nearly a decade ago. The idea was to give a group of religious leaders– rabbis, priests, ministers, pastors, monks– a high dose of psilocybin to see what would happen. These were people who had never taken psychedelics before. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to write about this research. The study was published back in May and I wrote about it in the New Yorker. The great thing about this podcast episode is that you get to hear some of these study participants tell their stories in their own words. These people are all professional orators, so audio is the perfect medium for them. This is the story of that study and what happened to the participants after they tripped for the very first time. Trust me, it’s worth a listen.
New episodes drop on Wednesdays. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’re moved to rate and review the podcast the production team would be grateful. It helps other people find it.