Robert Forte: The Records Of Gordon Wasson & The Secret Origins Of The Psychedelic Movement
Channel: Last Born in the Wilderness Podcast
Date: 22/05/2019

This is a segment of episode #195 of Last Born In The Wilderness “Mind Control: Psychedelics, Conspiracy, & Truth In The Post-Truth Era w/ Robert Forte.” Listen to the full episode: http://bit.ly/LBWforte2

Read the 1956 Life Magazine photo essay by R. Gordon Wasson: http://bit.ly/2Hjr2y9

In this segment of my discussion with psychedelic researcher Robert Forte, I ask Robert to explore the early days of psychedelic interest in American society, initially generated in large part by the release of the 1956 Life Magazine photo essay by R. Gordon Wasson (J.P. Morgan Vice President of Public Relations) — a landmark piece that was the first to expose the American public to the use and effects of psilocybin mushrooms. As Robert explains, the C.I.A. funded this venture (http://bit.ly/2VXcr4J), and was largely behind, along with media mogul Henry Luce, the branding of the psychedelic experience for Western audiences. Why would this be the case? In the episode, we descend down this rabbit hole of inquiry we discuss the absolutely perplexing history of the popularization (and demonization) of psychedelic use in the modern era, including the overwhelming interest by Western elites to use these substances for mind control and social engineering purposes, as demonstrated in the MK-ULTRA project by the C.I.A., among other examples. Toward the end of our discussion, Robert and I get into some rather hairy topics relating to “conspiracy theory” in the “post-truth era,” as defined by  the blurring of lines between what is verifiably true and what is difficult to make sense of. While Robert and I may not come to agreement on these difficult subjects, we both absolutely recognize the necessity of questioning officially sanctioned narratives of events as propagated by the corporate-and-state managed press. 

Robert Forte is a scholar and researcher of psychedelic drugs. He first studied with Frank Barron, who started the Psilocybin Project at Harvard with Timothy Leary in 1963. Robert is the former director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, and currently is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). James Fadiman, psychedelic researcher and writer, has described Robert as “a major but not well-known hero of the psychedelic movement.”

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