Expanding Mind

Expanding Mind is going on hiatus. In this solo show, Erik reflects on a decade of podcasting, the learning curves of the show, the work of conversation, the uncanniness of our moment, and the publication of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies.  

A conversation with my wife Jennifer Dumpert about collaborative dreaming, iPad skrying, meditation, play, the problem with interpretation, and her new bookLiminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep (North Atlantic).   

A discussion with meditation teacher and author Michael Taft  host of the Deconstructing Yourself podcast, about hardcore dharma, Buddhist modernism, shop talk, the soup of the sangha, and the problem of the achievement self and the blind leading the blind.  

An informative chat with clinical psychologist and psychedelic researcher Dr. Alexander Belser about qualitative research, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, the diversity of psychedelic trips, queer spiritualities, and the idea of coming “out of the psychedelic closet.”

A conversation with philosopher of religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein about wonder, horror, animism, the multiverse, Heidegger, Einstein, Hawaiian telescopes, and her book Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters (Columbia).  

A talk with experience designer Ida Benedetto about transformative games, trespassing, rules for sex parties, active introversion, magic circles, funerals, and queer spirituality.   

Entheogenic and community activists Larry Norris and Kufikiri talk about the growing campaign to decriminalize entheogenic plant medicines within the city of Oakland. Topics include community access, education, reframing “psychedelics,” blind spots, changing the narrative, and resisting “the metronome of programming."  https://www.decriminalizenature.org/  

Poet Janaka Stucky talks about guerrilla poetry, burlesque horror, mystical language, shame, prophecy, and the strange DMT experiences that inspired his latest book, Ascend Ascend (Third Mind Books).

Science and technology researcher Rebecca Jablonsky talks about consciousness hacking, tech ethnography, information ecosystems, media fasts, and the ups and downs of outsourcing awareness.  

Poet and literary scholar Stephen Yenser talks about James Merrill and his poetic epic The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), based on decades of Ouija board communications. Topics include: devotion, Maya Deren, duplicity, friendship, the alchemy of language, and Yenser’s recent annotation of the first part of Merrill’s masterpiece, The Book of Ephraim (PenguinRandomHouse).   

Yogi, psychonaut, and dear old pal Spiros Antonopoulos returns to talk about the Ashtanga lineage, Crowley’s yoga chops, the gifts of rigorous practice, NYC punk yoga, psychedelic Patanjali, and the ups and downs of opening his new Los Angeles Yoga Club amid the Instagram storms of LA body culture.

In this second wide-ranging talk with Anthony Blake, author of A Gymnasium of Higher Intelligence, we discuss J.G Bennett’s ideas of higher intelligence, the active vs. the receptive will, unconditioned nature, living language, and the trouble with the metaphor of “tool."

Host Erik Davis does a solo show on Beat Zen, the Fifth precept, tantric heresy, headless dharma collectives, capitalist subjectivity, and the Psychedelic Sangha meetups popping up in a few cities around North America.

Author and renowned Tarot expert Mary Greer discusses the amazing Pamela Colman Smith (the illustrator of the famous Rider-Wait-Smith deck). We touch on the Golden Dawn, the art of illustration, Jung’s active imagination, Smith’s musical visions, and the marvelous, heavily illustrated book, Pamela Colman Smith: the Untold Story (U.S. Games System).  

Historian and astrophysicist Adam Becker—author of the elegant and clarifying book What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics—talks about Schrödinger’s Cat, quantum philosophy, his beef with the Copenhagen interpretation, his fascination with Bell’s Theorem, and the difference between weirdness and nonsense.  

Writer and avant-garde publisher Tosh Berman discusses growing up in postwar California, hipster sexism, the hippie horrors of Topanga canyon, his impressions of family friends like Cameron and Brian Jones, and his charming new memoir Tosh, about growing up with his father, the remarkable underground California artist Wallace Berman.  

Writer and Ultraculture wizard Jason Louv talks about occult history, reality tunnels, his John Dee and the Empire of Angels book, Aleister Crowley’s secret Christianity, and the apocalyptic RPG the West can’t seem to escape.

Culture-crafter and plant poet Delvin Solkinson discusses permaculture principles, OS Gaia, cartomancy, visionary art, design activation, and the Galactic Trading Card Oracle.

Professor and queer historian Heather Lukes talks about Silver Lake riots, gay bikers, house ball scenes, the nostalgia for repression, and the joys and challenges of working on the online archive "The Grit and Glamour of Queer LA Subculture." 

Author and media scholar Douglas Rushkoff talks about collaborative technologies, silicon transhumanism, analog aura, the problem of the soul, and his new and timely manifesto Team Human. Join the team!  

In the first of his regular solo shows, host Erik Davis explores his personal history of “meditation"—including teenage stoner trances, voices in the head, and Zen anti-authoritarianism—with particular attention paid to the role of concentration practices in producing blissful and occasionally visionary states.  

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, cannonball trees, cosmic glitches, and her fascinating new book Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries & Personal Encounters with Plants (North Atlantic).  

Culture critic Mark Dery talks about Surrealism, the gay voice, penny dreadfuls, and the occult and Taoist influences examined in his fascinating new biography of Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (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).  

Occultist and Aleister Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski talks about Jack Parsons, the "method of science,” the Agape Lodge, the women of Thelema, and the pluses and minuses of the Strange Angel TV series.   

The Gurdjieffean teacher and DuVersity director Anthony Blake talks about dialogue, synergy, mind between brains, the trouble with teachers, and the gymnasium of beliefs in higher intelligence.   

In part two of our conversation, author and blogger Eric Wargo talks about dreams, self-fulfilling prophecies, unconscious trauma, the banality of true spirituality, and his book Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious.   

In part one of our conversation, author, blogger, and dreamer Eric Wargo talks about uncertainty, determinism, Zen, the evidence for “feeling the future," and his brilliant and head-spinning book Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious.   

A conversation with eco-literary scholar Derek Woods about science fiction, terrariums, geo-engineering, eco-modernism, and the wild science of designing technologies that exceed our control.

Host Erik Davis reflects on Burning Man in light of his first return to the event in nearly a decade. Topics include: the Burning Opera, Instagram, poetic terrorism, remembering dead people, chaos, and the unfolding paradigm of the city.

A conversation with devotees Usha Harding and Swami Bhajanananda about the unique Kali temple they help run in Laguna Beach, and about the recovery of magic, the perfume of practice, Western pujaris, religious diversity, and the challenge of commercial yoga.   

A conversation with activist and writer David Nickles about the DMT Nexus, psychedelic militancy, extraction tek, the Statement on Open Science for Psychedelic Medicines, MAPS, and the trouble with for-profit psilocybin companies. 

A conversation with South African ethnobotanist Dale Millard about sangoma healers, animist science, beta carbolines, ayahuasca, and the broad-spectrum healing properties of harmine. 

A conversation with writer, editor, and performer Mitch Mignano—aka Raven—about existential humor, the Cacophony Society and the origins of Burning Man, pranking your fears, nihilism, and the sacred clowns of the Sun Dance ceremony.  

A conversation with philosopher and religious studies professor Dustin Atlas about ancient skepticism, Madhyamaka Buddhism, the taste of honey, Montaigne, Robert Anton Wilson, and the path of doubt.  

A talk with gnostic scholar Matthew Dillon about religious mourning, the Nag Hammadi library, sex magick Jesus, the gnostic Eden, David Icke’s lizards, and the power of the archons as an allegory of contemporary technological and political power. 

A talk with journalist Adam Fisher about virtual reality, fumbling the future, the cyberculture underground, human augmentation, libertarianism, and his rich oral history Valley Of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley, as Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom (Twelve). 

A conversation with bestselling author Michael Pollan about psychedelic awe, trip reports, the mental health crisis, underground therapists and the highly positive reception of his book How to Change your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Penguin).

A talk with music scholar and ethnographer Owen Coggins about amplifier worship, sonic pilgrimage, “as if” listening, metal humor, and his new book Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal.

A wide-ranging conversation with writer and teacher Miranda Mellis about uncanny climates, thinking with fables, empathic fictions, “don’t know” politics, Buddhist meditation, and the entanglement with the nonhuman.

A discussion with anthropologist Joanna Steinhardt about her study of DIY mycology, psilocybe politics, PF Tek, and psychedelic naturalism.

A conversation with esoteric writer Gary Lachman about postmodernism, Positive Thinking, chaos magic, Putin's esoteric tricksters, and Gary's hot new book Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump (Tarcher).  

Guru’s Child   A conversation with artist and man-about-town Naropa Sabine about Shakti, self-formation, rural ashrams, and growing up with a Tantric guru for a dad.    

A conversation with author Gregory Alan Thornbury about 70s Jesus Music, apocalyptic politics, Bob Dylan, countercultural Christianity, and his fascinating biography of the Christian rock star Larry Norman: Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock.  

A conversation with designer and snowboarder Sijay James about archaic revivals, neotribal design, mystic powder, flow, and falling with style.