Psychedelics, Esotericism, Conspiracy Theories, Bowie

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Once per quarter (more or less), I like to provide a roundup of recent media appearances, talks, and other non-prose work I’ve been doing. Here’s the latest on my work in politics and psychedelics — I did a roundup of recent meditation work back in February.

Mystical & Jewish Stuff

First, I loved doing this podcast, talking about David Bowie’s many references to Western Esotericism (and a few to Kabbalah). Bringing together weird religion, popular culture, musical genius, and queerness? Yes, please.

Meanwhile, on that other Jewish subject (Antisemitism! Israel! Truama!), I had a chance to talk with the Nexus Projects’ Emily Tamkin about the weaponization of antisemitism:

And, somehow bringing those topics together, here’s me and Mark Oppenheimer talking about how Candace Owens learned her esoteric and bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories… from an Orthodox rabbi:

Finally on this subject, the Epstein Files , the moral referendum its revelation demands, and its contribution to antisemitism:

Psychedelic Stuff

When I’m not doing journalism here on Substack (or elsewhere), I’m researching and writing about psychedelics and religion. This presentation was a unique opportunity to share the work I’m doing at Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, focusing on religious communities’ views about and experiences of psychedelics, and on how psychedelic therapists/scientists/critics can become more culturally competent when they relate to religious people’s experiences on psychedelics.

(Here’s a playlist of other talks I’ve given on this subject.)

Meanwhile, the other work I’ve been doing on psychedelics has been at Harvard Law School, where last year Noah Feldman and I co-convened the first-ever symposium on psychedelics and monotheistic traditions. Recently, at a different Harvard psychedelics conference, Noah set forth his understanding of the psychedelic humanities — what the field is, what it can contribute, and why it is important, especially in a cultural moment when the meanings of intelligence, and consciousness are newly being questioned. Strong recommend.

And here’s Noah and I exploring some of the ways in which Abrahamic traditions relate to psychedelics:

Finally, thanks to a grant from Harvard’s Mahindra Center on the Humanities, I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to editing, posting, and transcribing talks from the aforementioned symposium. They are now all online here. Below are a couple of my favorites:

Alright, that’s this quarter’s roundup! Thanks for watching.

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As you may have noticed, I’ve been staying out of certain stories lately. For example, if there’s something that I can contribute to the discourse on Trump and the Danger to Democracy, fine — but if not, I’d rather not add to the noise. Fortunately, others have contributed quite a bit about stories that I find infuriating. To wit:

• Here’s Jeff Tiedrich on “the smitten cultist who finds racist memes for Dear Leader to post.” Mystery solved, I guess. And here’s Chris Geidner on the “cartoonishly evil, corrupt act in defiance of all ethical and democratic norms to transfer nearly $2 billion of federal funds ($1,776,000,000, to be precise) into a slush fund over which Trump will have ultimate control.” Unparalleled corruption, even for Trump. Wow.

• I’ve mostly stayed out of the controversy over Nicholas Kristof’s awfully-sourced, irresponsible, and yet still damning-mostly-accurate-and-thus-important column on sexual abuse in Israeli prisons. Fortunately, Shaul Magid has provided a summary of the criticisms, denialist responses, and responses to the responses, that I 92% agree with. (I am a bit more critical of Kristof, but whatever.)

• And yet I have not stayed away from Israel/Palestine discourse. Here’s my latest, in the Forward, which could really have been published here in Both/And as it’s largely about the psychospiritual roots of what I call the “Great Hardening” of positions and populations when it comes to Israel/Palestine.

• Last on that cluster of issues: Arno Rosenfeld’s great piece on the Jewish Right’s sudden realization that white nationalists may not be great allies after all. Gosh, who could’ve predicted that?

• As a parent in a school district that’s afraid to even talk about the massive spike in SPED spending, I am unhealthily obsessed with this issue, in which everyone is a bad guy (except the kids themselves of course). Anya Kamenetz has written the definitive omnidirectional takedown of the current system.

• A lot of the time, I’m mostly just envious of Rebecca Solnit. Sometimes, though, she does really nail it, as in last week’s longform essay which starts out as a Solnittian bit of encouragement in the wake of Viktor Orban’s defeat but which then spirals (in a good way) into a vortex involving AI, elite malefactors, and the unexpectedly accelerated transition away from fossil fuels. It’s worth a deep read but if you need further tempting, here’s a great paragraph from it:

  Inside the national chrysalis, in our civic meltdown, something is shouting it would rather go backward. The right is openly, directly pursuing regression, rollback, backlash. They want their half-imaginary past back, and they also recognize that in order to pursue their anti-egalitarian agenda they need to suppress democratic participation. But the imaginal cells in the goo are instructions for it to reform as a butterfly, not return to a caterpillar.

I’ll have what she’s having. See you next week.