[00:00:00 - 00:00:13]	 [Music]
[00:00:13 - 00:00:15]	 I can't see.
[00:00:15 - 00:00:31]	 [Music]
[00:00:31 - 00:00:34]	 And we have heard from the Austin Lounge Lizards.
[00:00:34 - 00:00:43]	 If you're an Austin Lounge Lizards fan, call in and say thanks with your contribution at 471-6291 on this, our last day of fundraising.
[00:00:43 - 00:00:46]	 That's 471-6291.
[00:00:46 - 00:00:49]	 And with Pink Floyd playing in the background, prepare yourself.
[00:00:49 - 00:00:52]	 We're going to be speaking very shortly to Terrence McKenna.
[00:00:52 - 00:00:56]	 Our phone number is 471-6291.
[00:00:56 - 00:01:21]	 [Music]
[00:01:21 - 00:01:46]	 [Music]
[00:01:46 - 00:02:06]	 [Music]
[00:02:06 - 00:02:09]	 Okay, 471-6291 is the pledge number.
[00:02:09 - 00:02:10]	 Oh, you want to hear him say that?
[00:02:10 - 00:02:11]	 Okay.
[00:02:11 - 00:02:12]	 Okay.
[00:02:12 - 00:02:13]	 All right.
[00:02:13 - 00:02:14]	 Turn it up.
[00:02:14 - 00:02:17]	 There's no dark side of the moon.
[00:02:17 - 00:02:19]	 Matter of fact, it's all dark is what he said.
[00:02:19 - 00:02:20]	 Okay.
[00:02:20 - 00:02:22]	 That was Pink Floyd.
[00:02:22 - 00:02:25]	 Now, here we are at 471-6291 with time running out.
[00:02:25 - 00:02:30]	 We have an hour left to get you to call in and make your contribution to public radio.
[00:02:30 - 00:02:34]	 And Deklektikos, my show is ending in an hour, folks.
[00:02:34 - 00:02:39]	 And if you are a regular listener and have not become a member, boy, just don't let me find out.
[00:02:39 - 00:02:46]	 471-6291, when I see you at the grocery store and I see your eyes avert quickly, whoops, you didn't see me.
[00:02:46 - 00:02:47]	 I'll know.
[00:02:47 - 00:02:49]	 I'll know you're one who didn't give up.
[00:02:49 - 00:02:52]	 471-6291 is the pledge number.
[00:02:52 - 00:02:53]	 Get that call in right now.
[00:02:53 - 00:02:55]	 I want to hear from you.
[00:02:55 - 00:03:01]	 Local support for this broadcast of Deklektikos is provided in part by Waterloo Records and Video,
[00:03:01 - 00:03:07]	 where music still matters, at the corner of 6th Street and Lamar Boulevard.
[00:03:07 - 00:03:12]	 Again, our last minute pledge number is 471-6291.
[00:03:12 - 00:03:15]	 We can put your name on our list very easily.
[00:03:15 - 00:03:19]	 Just make that call, 471-6291.
[00:03:19 - 00:03:21]	 Thanks to these people who did call in.
[00:03:21 - 00:03:26]	 Peter Bain, in loving respect for his sister Kay Brooks in Dripping Springs.
[00:03:26 - 00:03:31]	 Fran Nelson, responding to the challenge for artists who make a living from their work.
[00:03:31 - 00:03:36]	 Cindy and Jim Phillips, challenging everyone who enjoys John's laugh.
[00:03:36 - 00:03:39]	 [laughs]
[00:03:39 - 00:03:48]	 Mary Zitzler, Bruce, excuse me, Bill Williams, a new member, Jack and Shaisan Odom, Foxes of Harrow.
[00:03:48 - 00:03:49]	 Now what?
[00:03:49 - 00:03:54]	 Okay, they, I guess they read Foxes of Harrow, Jack and Shaisan Odom.
[00:03:54 - 00:03:56]	 Have either of you guys ever read the Foxes of Harrow?
[00:03:56 - 00:03:57]	 Me?
[00:03:57 - 00:03:58]	 No.
[00:03:58 - 00:03:59]	 It's great. You?
[00:03:59 - 00:04:00]	 I haven't.
[00:04:00 - 00:04:01]	 It's a great book.
[00:04:01 - 00:04:08]	 And Phillip Stevens, Donna Fowler, C.L. Sinek, saw the Rocky Horror Show 52 times.
[00:04:08 - 00:04:09]	 You are sick.
[00:04:09 - 00:04:11]	 And he was a projectionist.
[00:04:11 - 00:04:13]	 Okay, that was his excuse.
[00:04:13 - 00:04:15]	 I've seen it probably about 25.
[00:04:15 - 00:04:21]	 Patrice Carter, a new member, Laura Caffey, challenges people who can touch their nose with their tongues.
[00:04:21 - 00:04:22]	 I cannot do that.
[00:04:22 - 00:04:27]	 But if you can, call 471-6291 and meet Laura's challenge.
[00:04:27 - 00:04:32]	 Caffey, if you can touch your tongue, touch your nose with your tongue.
[00:04:32 - 00:04:34]	 471-6291.
[00:04:34 - 00:04:40]	 Sam Ferris, his mom Virginia pledged for him, and Bobby and Louis Lowe, new members.
[00:04:40 - 00:04:42]	 Just about out of time today.
[00:04:42 - 00:04:45]	 471-6291 is our pledge number.
[00:04:45 - 00:04:46]	 Thank you for calling.
[00:04:46 - 00:04:54]	 And as I welcome Terrence McKenna, let me first say that I've been asked to mention that there is a film called Strange Attractor,
[00:04:54 - 00:05:02]	 which features Terrence McKenna, and it will be shown at the Dolby Theatre on October the 18th at midnight and the 19th at 2 o'clock.
[00:05:02 - 00:05:03]	 That's just, let's not forget that.
[00:05:03 - 00:05:06]	 That's Chris Mosier's film.
[00:05:06 - 00:05:12]	 All right, I'm going to take the umbrellas of Cherbourg away, as much as I love that music that's been on in the background.
[00:05:12 - 00:05:17]	 And we will say just barely good morning at 1156 to Terrence McKenna.
[00:05:17 - 00:05:18]	 Terrence, hello.
[00:05:18 - 00:05:19]	 Pleasure to be with you.
[00:05:19 - 00:05:21]	 And you are here for the Whole Life Expo.
[00:05:21 - 00:05:22]	 I am.
[00:05:22 - 00:05:24]	 And you will be speaking, Kathy, when will he do his talk?
[00:05:24 - 00:05:27]	 He'll be speaking on Saturday, tomorrow at 5 o'clock.
[00:05:27 - 00:05:28]	 5 o'clock in the afternoon?
[00:05:28 - 00:05:29]	 In the Coliseum.
[00:05:29 - 00:05:30]	 In the Coliseum.
[00:05:30 - 00:05:34]	 We had such an incredible response to Terrence last year.
[00:05:34 - 00:05:45]	 He sold out the biggest room we had, so we've moved him over to the Coliseum where he hopefully will be able to accommodate up to about 12,500 people if need be.
[00:05:45 - 00:05:50]	 Okay, well, there is a large audience of people who know all about him or a great deal about him.
[00:05:50 - 00:05:57]	 But for those who know nothing about Terrence McKenna, Terrence, what would you -- how would you introduce yourself?
[00:05:57 - 00:06:10]	 I guess I'm a plant biologist turned psychedelic advocate transformed into a kind of spokesman for technophilia and psychedelica.
[00:06:10 - 00:06:12]	 And you have been an author?
[00:06:12 - 00:06:21]	 I've written a number of books, Food of the Gods, Invisible Landscape, Archaic Revival, just to mention three of them.
[00:06:21 - 00:06:30]	 And the one that I have, This Invisible Landscape, is one that you are touring now or is that -- it's been out a couple of years, I think, sir?
[00:06:30 - 00:06:36]	 They all came out in the early -- through the middle '90s, and I've been touring them.
[00:06:36 - 00:06:44]	 I have another book in the works called Casting Nets into the Sea of Mind, but it'll be a while before that comes out.
[00:06:44 - 00:06:49]	 I've also done a number of musical and film projects around.
[00:06:49 - 00:06:51]	 So you're into music as well?
[00:06:51 - 00:06:53]	 Well, music is into me.
[00:06:53 - 00:07:07]	 I'm not very musical, but there's been a lot of sampling of my voice, and I've done vocal overlays and things like that with bands like the Shaman and Zavouia, Space Time Continuum.
[00:07:07 - 00:07:08]	 Okay.
[00:07:08 - 00:07:14]	 What will you be talking about when you give your talk at the WHOLE Life Expo?
[00:07:14 - 00:07:17]	 Well, it's a sort of a broad topic.
[00:07:17 - 00:07:20]	 It's here we are at the end of history.
[00:07:20 - 00:07:23]	 All the world's cultures are melting together.
[00:07:23 - 00:07:29]	 More powerful technologies than we've ever imagined are now in existence.
[00:07:29 - 00:07:32]	 Our political assumptions are in flux.
[00:07:32 - 00:07:37]	 Our environment is being destroyed before our very eyes.
[00:07:37 - 00:07:45]	 All kinds of spiritual and religious prophets are selling their wares in the streets.
[00:07:45 - 00:07:55]	 So my take on all this is basically simply to ask the Mr. Natural question, which is, what does it all mean?
[00:07:55 - 00:08:09]	 How did we, essentially an arboreal primate, ever get into a situation of the sort represented by the end of the 20th century?
[00:08:09 - 00:08:14]	 Is it a mad play without meaning?
[00:08:14 - 00:08:17]	 Is it the unfolding of God's plan?
[00:08:17 - 00:08:21]	 Is it the protocol of the elders of Zion or the alien invaders?
[00:08:21 - 00:08:24]	 Just what is going on?
[00:08:24 - 00:08:33]	 And of course the special lens that I bring to this is the much maligned and highly suspect psychedelic experience,
[00:08:33 - 00:08:43]	 anathema to some, religion to others, one of the most controversial behaviors available to 20th century people,
[00:08:43 - 00:08:50]	 but one that I think is probably very important to recapturing a sense of personal wholeness
[00:08:50 - 00:08:59]	 and then trying to fit oneself into this truly mad, mad world that we've called into being.
[00:08:59 - 00:09:05]	 The psychedelics that you're talking about might be which drugs?
[00:09:05 - 00:09:20]	 Plant-based indoles such as psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, the combinatory Amazonian thing called ayahuasca,
[00:09:20 - 00:09:29]	 these are all psychedelic plants and plant mixtures with very long histories of human usage in non-Western society.
[00:09:29 - 00:09:37]	 Western society is the most phobic of all cultures toward the psychedelic experience.
[00:09:37 - 00:09:41]	 It's almost on a par with our phobia towards sexuality.
[00:09:41 - 00:09:43]	 In fact, maybe these things are linked.
[00:09:43 - 00:09:48]	 But in Aboriginal and traditional cultures around the world,
[00:09:48 - 00:09:56]	 spirituality has always been associated with dissolving of ordinary cultural boundaries and states of mind.
[00:09:56 - 00:10:03]	 And you know, you can do this with meditation and fasting and abandonment in the wilderness and so forth and so on.
[00:10:03 - 00:10:15]	 But the most effective and non-invasive way to approach this, everyone agrees, is through ingestion of psychedelic plants.
[00:10:15 - 00:10:24]	 But because these experiences are so powerful, they challenge ordinary secular and religious authority
[00:10:24 - 00:10:33]	 and consequently a society, if it chooses to, can get into a real swivet around these issues, such as our society.
[00:10:33 - 00:10:39]	 I don't really link this to the larger problem of international drug syndicates and addiction and all that.
[00:10:39 - 00:10:45]	 That's a slightly different area of concern because the psychedelics are not addictive
[00:10:45 - 00:10:49]	 and they do not generate huge criminal syndicates.
[00:10:49 - 00:10:57]	 They don't make anybody very much money, but they certainly attract a great deal of media attention,
[00:10:57 - 00:11:06]	 most of it negative, because of their impact on our ways of looking at our politics and our social arrangements
[00:11:06 - 00:11:09]	 and everything about being human.
[00:11:09 - 00:11:11]	 Terence McKenna is our guest.
[00:11:11 - 00:11:19]	 We are still accepting pledges, by the way, at 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:11:19 - 00:11:21]	 This is the last week to make your contributions.
[00:11:21 - 00:11:26]	 I hope you will do so right now, even as we speak, 471-6291.
[00:11:26 - 00:11:31]	 Terence, the way in which you are talking about the psychedelic drugs that you've mentioned
[00:11:31 - 00:11:37]	 suggests that they might be something other than just for fun or escape,
[00:11:37 - 00:11:45]	 that they might actually have something useful in terms of the human experience for instruction.
[00:11:45 - 00:11:50]	 What are we going to learn from these drugs, or had we learned, or could we?
[00:11:50 - 00:11:56]	 Well, human culture is essentially a product of the imagination.
[00:11:56 - 00:12:03]	 All our religions, our technical accomplishments, our literature, our poetry, all products of the imagination.
[00:12:03 - 00:12:10]	 This is precisely the domain where these psychedelics impact very, very powerfully.
[00:12:10 - 00:12:19]	 So if we believe that invention, creativity, individual self-expression, insight,
[00:12:19 - 00:12:26]	 if we value these things, then the psychedelics are primary items in our cultural toolbox,
[00:12:26 - 00:12:30]	 because they empower all of those things.
[00:12:30 - 00:12:38]	 It's curious to me that Western civilization, which invented the idea of progress through technology
[00:12:38 - 00:12:45]	 and social transformation, is so phobic of this factor in nature,
[00:12:45 - 00:12:50]	 which would accelerate those tendencies in our own culture.
[00:12:50 - 00:12:57]	 So I think there is something for our culture in psychedelics,
[00:12:57 - 00:13:01]	 and there is definitely something for the individual.
[00:13:01 - 00:13:05]	 You know, in a way, culture is like software.
[00:13:05 - 00:13:09]	 It's the operating system in the local area.
[00:13:09 - 00:13:18]	 You download being a Wusoto tribesman or a Hong Kong stockbroker, and then behaviors are prescribed.
[00:13:18 - 00:13:25]	 But naive people tend to believe that these operating systems are reality.
[00:13:25 - 00:13:31]	 They're not reality. They're just something you learn as you grow up in a certain time and place.
[00:13:31 - 00:13:35]	 Psychedelics seem to dissolve cultural conditioning.
[00:13:35 - 00:13:39]	 This is one of the things that makes them such political dynamite,
[00:13:39 - 00:13:45]	 because the business of political systems is to convince you of the local operating system,
[00:13:45 - 00:13:50]	 convince you it was sent from God and is beyond critique,
[00:13:50 - 00:13:59]	 when in fact it's just a bunch of rules fellow monkeys push together over time to make things easier for the alpha males.
[00:13:59 - 00:14:04]	 Psychedelics dissolve these cultural assumptions, whatever they may be,
[00:14:04 - 00:14:08]	 and for the first time you sort of get to look at the naked human animal
[00:14:08 - 00:14:14]	 and think about where you might want to go personally and as a member,
[00:14:14 - 00:14:18]	 a politically potent member of a society.
[00:14:18 - 00:14:26]	 I think where most everybody who is in our listening range right now should go is to the telephone
[00:14:26 - 00:14:35]	 and call 471-6291 and pledge your membership to Eclectikos, where you hear quite a variety of things.
[00:14:35 - 00:14:41]	 Our guest right now is Terrence McKenna, author of "Food of the Gods" and "Invisible Landscape" and other books,
[00:14:41 - 00:14:46]	 and he will be at the WHOLE LIFE Expo this weekend, Saturday at 5. Is that right, Kathy?
[00:14:46 - 00:14:48]	 Saturday at 5. Saturday at 5 at the Colosseum.
[00:14:48 - 00:14:53]	 A pledge number, and it's very important that you call if you enjoy what you hear on this program.
[00:14:53 - 00:14:59]	 This is your last chance to do it. It is 12-06. It will be 12-59 in no time and I'll be finished.
[00:14:59 - 00:15:06]	 So give us a call. Make your pledge. 471-6291. Do it now. There's a category that will suit your pocketbook.
[00:15:06 - 00:15:10]	 471-6291. You spend a lot of money on a lot of things throughout the year.
[00:15:10 - 00:15:15]	 How many CDs did you buy this year? How many have I made you buy by playing something that you just couldn't resist?
[00:15:15 - 00:15:21]	 Your budget for CDs? How much do you budget for public radio? This is where you get to audition those CDs.
[00:15:21 - 00:15:31]	 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291. And if you have a cable on your television set, you are paying what?
[00:15:31 - 00:15:38]	 $40 a month for something you really don't even use that much, and yet you use us every day?
[00:15:38 - 00:15:44]	 $40 is a membership. 471-6291. Call. Pledge now. A business membership would be nice, too.
[00:15:44 - 00:15:48]	 Thank you very much for calling. Now back to Terrence McKenna.
[00:15:48 - 00:15:53]	 Terrence, it's a controversial subject, of course. There are many people listening right now who think, "What? This is outrageous."
[00:15:53 - 00:15:57]	 I had somebody on who's promoting the use of psychedelic drugs.
[00:15:57 - 00:16:03]	 Well, I don't know that I'm promoting, you're promoting it, but it's interesting to hear what you have to say about it.
[00:16:03 - 00:16:10]	 I would like to know more specifically what these drugs tell us.
[00:16:10 - 00:16:17]	 You're saying that it tells us something about ourselves that is other than what we have been told by the culture that has evolved.
[00:16:17 - 00:16:21]	 Do the drugs have a message in themselves? Is it a language?
[00:16:21 - 00:16:29]	 Is it a way of experiencing a potential in one's own imagination that has heretofore not been tapped?
[00:16:29 - 00:16:36]	 Well, first of all, it's a gradient. I mean, whenever we have to talk pharmacology for a moment,
[00:16:36 - 00:16:43]	 whenever you're talking about a substance or a drug, there's a curve of dose response.
[00:16:43 - 00:16:47]	 So let's just use psilocybin as an example.
[00:16:47 - 00:16:57]	 At low doses, psilocybin makes your vision clearer, makes you feel more robust, more interested in the exterior world.
[00:16:57 - 00:16:58]	 Kind of like coffee or something.
[00:16:58 - 00:17:01]	 On the edge of that, it stimulates.
[00:17:01 - 00:17:11]	 At higher doses, unusual thoughts begin to form, thoughts that you recognize as not your normal pattern of thinking and observing.
[00:17:11 - 00:17:25]	 At still higher doses, when you close your eyes, the normal orange or pale brown background behind your eyelids has been replaced by moving walls of color and pattern.
[00:17:25 - 00:17:34]	 At still higher levels, these moving walls of color and pattern become visions or hallucinations.
[00:17:34 - 00:17:38]	 They become recognizable visual scenarios.
[00:17:38 - 00:17:44]	 Well, anything like that is just flooding your mind with information.
[00:17:44 - 00:17:55]	 And these things have intimations of the distant past, the far future, alien connections of some sort.
[00:17:55 - 00:18:03]	 It's definitely magnifying our own set of cultural preconceptions and obsessions.
[00:18:03 - 00:18:09]	 But it's also putting information in there that we could not ordinarily imagine.
[00:18:09 - 00:18:20]	 And for me, the sine qua non of the psychedelic experience is when I look at the contents of my own mind and say to myself, I could not have imagined this.
[00:18:20 - 00:18:27]	 To me, that's the proof that some kind of communication is taking place.
[00:18:27 - 00:18:46]	 At a fairly heroic dose of psilocybin, a person lying in silent darkness has the impression that in a half an hour they're seeing more art of higher quality than the entire Western canon has produced in the last thousand years.
[00:18:46 - 00:18:54]	 And your little you there in your trailer near Waco or there in your teepee up near Sonoma.
[00:18:54 - 00:19:01]	 And yet this Niagara of alien and unpredictable beauty is pouring through your head.
[00:19:01 - 00:19:04]	 For artists, it's like a magic carpet.
[00:19:04 - 00:19:18]	 And the challenge to my mind after 30 years of being involved in all this is a) to have the experience, to have it in an attitude of appreciation and calmness.
[00:19:18 - 00:19:22]	 But the second implication is somewhat political.
[00:19:22 - 00:19:35]	 It's to communicate the vision through words, through painting, through animation, because as we communicate it collectively, it will become real.
[00:19:35 - 00:19:37]	 And this is what's happening on the Internet.
[00:19:37 - 00:19:46]	 In fact, the Internet is a perfect example of a psychedelic technology at the service of psychedelic goals.
[00:19:46 - 00:19:50]	 It's not something government ever intended to give to the people.
[00:19:50 - 00:19:55]	 It's not something big corporations called for in loud voices.
[00:19:55 - 00:20:12]	 It's something that hackers, freaks and heads dreamed up, whipped up out of the existing tools of the culture, a word processor, the telephone lines, some communication switching equipment.
[00:20:12 - 00:20:24]	 So it's a kind of emergent technology that I think comes out of the depth of commitment to the psychedelic experience of the people in that field.
[00:20:24 - 00:20:27]	 Terrence McKenna is our guest and author.
[00:20:27 - 00:20:37]	 We are urging you to call in your contributions to public radio at 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:20:37 - 00:20:40]	 I know that you don't want to miss a word that Terrence has to say.
[00:20:40 - 00:20:45]	 So call right now because I'm going to yak for about as long a time as it takes you to make your contribution.
[00:20:45 - 00:20:51]	 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:20:51 - 00:20:54]	 And if you don't call, I'll just say goodbye to Terrence and start playing tunes.
[00:20:54 - 00:20:55]	 So you better call.
[00:20:55 - 00:20:59]	 471-6291, 471-6291.
[00:20:59 - 00:21:02]	 Your $25 membership, seven cents a day.
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[00:21:11 - 00:21:17]	 And the KUT Arts Plus card, which will give you discounts to over 30 arts organizations in and around Austin,
[00:21:17 - 00:21:23]	 including museums and theater places, the PAC, the Arts to Austin Lyric Opera, on and on and on.
[00:21:23 - 00:21:24]	 The list goes.
[00:21:24 - 00:21:26]	 $0.22 a day gives you a lot.
[00:21:26 - 00:21:30]	 Plus you get to listen to your radio knowing that you are part of what makes it happen.
[00:21:30 - 00:21:32]	 471-6291.
[00:21:32 - 00:21:37]	 A family membership, $0.44 a day gives you a very nice book that will tell you how to get a
[00:21:37 - 00:21:40]	 around Texas and see some lovely, lovely parks.
[00:21:40 - 00:21:45]	 And the $365 a day club membership, $1 a day call.
[00:21:45 - 00:21:47]	 You'll get your name listed in the communique.
[00:21:47 - 00:21:49]	 It goes out to all of our listeners every month.
[00:21:49 - 00:21:51]	 A $500 business membership would be very nice.
[00:21:51 - 00:21:56]	 And this is the last 45 minutes that you have in which to call and say thank you for the variety of programming
[00:21:56 - 00:22:00]	 that I bring you on this program every day, five days a week.
[00:22:00 - 00:22:02]	 471-6291.
[00:22:02 - 00:22:03]	 All right.
[00:22:03 - 00:22:05]	 Now that is time enough for you to have made that call.
[00:22:05 - 00:22:09]	 Believe it or not, if you didn't do it, go on and do it right now and keep your ear open to Terrence
[00:22:09 - 00:22:12]	 because we're going back to Terrence McKenna.
[00:22:12 - 00:22:20]	 So what I would like to ask, you have made reference to the fact that other cultures have used these drugs
[00:22:20 - 00:22:27]	 and that they've been integrated in the cultural life of shamans and holy people, et cetera.
[00:22:27 - 00:22:30]	 We've heard a lot about that scene, movies about it perhaps.
[00:22:30 - 00:22:37]	 And one of the things that I note you include as part of the project of this book, "Invisible Landscape,"
[00:22:37 - 00:22:42]	 is the I Ching, which is one of the oldest -- as I understand it, it's maybe the oldest book in the world
[00:22:42 - 00:22:45]	 or one of the oldest things that we have preserved.
[00:22:45 - 00:22:49]	 It's from China and it dates back, what, 5,000 or 6,000 years at least, something like that.
[00:22:49 - 00:22:54]	 How does that book come into the work that you've been doing?
[00:22:54 - 00:23:00]	 Well, I've been fascinated by the I Ching since I was 13 or 14 years old.
[00:23:00 - 00:23:06]	 As you say, it's a method of Chinese divination that's very, very old.
[00:23:06 - 00:23:11]	 How did you come to be interested in it at the age of 13 or 14? That seems unusual to me.
[00:23:11 - 00:23:19]	 Well, I was a heavy reader and I was interested in the psychology of Carl Jung, the Swiss death psychologist.
[00:23:19 - 00:23:21]	 As a 13-year-old.
[00:23:21 - 00:23:29]	 Well, I wasn't good at basketball. I had bad eyes. I couldn't catch any kind of round object.
[00:23:29 - 00:23:35]	 So a sort of survival response was to hide out in the library.
[00:23:35 - 00:23:40]	 And it made me the freak I am today.
[00:23:40 - 00:23:47]	 But yes, the I Ching, my -- you know, people's involvement with psychedelics often takes them
[00:23:47 - 00:23:52]	 in some very personal and particularized direction.
[00:23:52 - 00:23:59]	 And for me, it took the form of a mathematical analysis of this ancient Chinese oracle.
[00:23:59 - 00:24:06]	 The ordinary notion with the I Ching is that you go through a process of sortilage, tossing coins
[00:24:06 - 00:24:11]	 or moving small sticks around, and you get a reading.
[00:24:11 - 00:24:18]	 The reading of 64 hexagrams will change into one of the other hexagrams, and this is accompanied by a reading.
[00:24:18 - 00:24:23]	 But these hexagrams occur in a fixed order traditionally.
[00:24:23 - 00:24:28]	 And I studied that for mathematical intent.
[00:24:28 - 00:24:34]	 In other words, I was interested in the question, is this traditional order of the hexagram simply a jumble
[00:24:34 - 00:24:40]	 that's been preserved through tradition, or was there some mathematical reasoning behind it?
[00:24:40 - 00:24:43]	 And that's a pretty dry academic question.
[00:24:43 - 00:24:50]	 But as I got into it, I realized, or I became convinced, as I guess the way to put it,
[00:24:50 - 00:24:59]	 that there is a pattern inside the Ching that actually pictures the ebb and flow in this world of ours
[00:24:59 - 00:25:08]	 of a quality which science does not recognize, Western science, a quality which in the East is called Tao,
[00:25:08 - 00:25:14]	 but which I chose to call, after Alfred North Whitehead, novelty.
[00:25:14 - 00:25:23]	 And it's an invisible something in the world which causes investments to succeed, movies to do well,
[00:25:23 - 00:25:28]	 relationships to flourish, or the opposite in its absence.
[00:25:28 - 00:25:37]	 And we can't see or feel this stuff in the world, but it builds things up and it tears them down at every level.
[00:25:37 - 00:25:45]	 Empires, whole species, relationships, it's happening on every level of time,
[00:25:45 - 00:25:52]	 and it can actually be pictured as a graph, like a stock market graph, novelty, ebbing, and flowing.
[00:25:52 - 00:25:59]	 Well, to cut to the chase on this, the bottom line in this kind of thinking is the ability to predict
[00:25:59 - 00:26:06]	 not only the future, which is pretty much a fire-free zone, but also to predict the past,
[00:26:06 - 00:26:15]	 to lay these novelty graphs out over the past two thousand years of invention, migration, pogrom, and so forth,
[00:26:15 - 00:26:26]	 and to see that when society is inventive, creative, productive, novelty is increasing according to this mathematical theory.
[00:26:26 - 00:26:36]	 Similarly, societies that are restricting freedoms, very constipated, very restrictive in their approach to reality,
[00:26:36 - 00:26:44]	 these register on this graph as societies ruled by the opposite of novelty, which I call habit.
[00:26:44 - 00:26:51]	 So all of reality can be seen as a kind of dynamic struggle between habit and novelty,
[00:26:51 - 00:26:58]	 each trying to get the upper hand over the other, and this can all be mathematically modeled out of the I Ching.
[00:26:58 - 00:27:04]	 You see, the thing that's so puzzling to people about the I Ching is that it works,
[00:27:04 - 00:27:16]	 and yet it's as occult as the tarot or throwing the bones or any other of these contemptuously dismissed occult methodologies,
[00:27:16 - 00:27:21]	 but very scientifically minded people have been impressed by the fact that the I Ching works.
[00:27:21 - 00:27:29]	 So I set out to figure out why and how it worked, and I wrote about this in the Invisible Landscape and have published software,
[00:27:29 - 00:27:37]	 and it's my unique contribution to 20th century ideology.
[00:27:37 - 00:27:43]	 Psychedelics are advocated and defended by many people from many different perspectives,
[00:27:43 - 00:27:53]	 but I, so far as I know, am the only person who has built a complete edifice of explanations of nature,
[00:27:53 - 00:28:00]	 but honestly admitting that the foundations and the inspiration were psychedelic experiences.
[00:28:00 - 00:28:09]	 Terence McKenna, our guest. Our pledge number is 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:28:09 - 00:28:17]	 It's unusual for me to have as a guest at the very end of the program, which concludes our fundraising efforts,
[00:28:17 - 00:28:22]	 but Terence McKenna is an unusual person, and I'm glad to have him today,
[00:28:22 - 00:28:30]	 and I hope you will be responding by calling and making pledges at 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:28:30 - 00:28:35]	 We're just about finished. Time is running out. 471-6291.
[00:28:35 - 00:28:39]	 Call and make a pledge. You might miss a couple of words, but call and make your pledge.
[00:28:39 - 00:28:43]	 He has some more interesting things to say. 471-6291.
[00:28:43 - 00:28:47]	 The end of the fundraiser is upon us, and it will be a success if you call.
[00:28:47 - 00:28:55]	 If they are sitting in that room over there with 15 people and no telephones ringing, I am in big you-know-what.
[00:28:55 - 00:29:04]	 So call 471-6291. That could get us into a discussion of another kind of drug, but let's not go there.
[00:29:04 - 00:29:08]	 Let's say you said the I Ching works. What do you mean it works?
[00:29:08 - 00:29:12]	 I have the impression that you get a, you know, you do your coins or whatever you're going to do,
[00:29:12 - 00:29:15]	 and you get this one, and you read what you want, and you get what you want out of it,
[00:29:15 - 00:29:19]	 but you're saying it works like in a scientific way or something.
[00:29:19 - 00:29:26]	 Well, the frequency with which people react to these readings by saying this is freakishly accurate,
[00:29:26 - 00:29:30]	 this is incredibly cogent and directly to the point.
[00:29:30 - 00:29:35]	 It's more than like the astrology thing in the newspaper. Oh, yeah, so I can see myself in that.
[00:29:35 - 00:29:41]	 I think it's more precise. But let me riff on something you said in your pitch.
[00:29:41 - 00:29:52]	 You said time is running out. This is a conclusion that I was not happy to have forced upon me by this research into the I Ching.
[00:29:52 - 00:30:03]	 It not only tells you or gives you this map of novelty of past and future, but for the map of novelty to fit the historical data,
[00:30:03 - 00:30:13]	 you have to swallow the very large and for a rationalist uncomfortable conclusion that the end of time itself
[00:30:13 - 00:30:26]	 or a moment of universal novelty, very difficult to picture through the eyes of ordinary physics, is upon us, lies not that far in the future.
[00:30:26 - 00:30:34]	 And so this has given my career a peculiar spin because here I am basically trying to be a scientific rationalist,
[00:30:34 - 00:30:41]	 but now burdened not only with a theory that predicts the future, but in the course of predicting the future,
[00:30:41 - 00:30:51]	 predicts that in 2012 A.D., all of the novelty that has been unleashed over the past few billions of years,
[00:30:51 - 00:30:58]	 not only cultural and technological novelty, but the novelty of biology, the novelty of geology,
[00:30:58 - 00:31:10]	 all of these things reach some kind of crescendo of connectivity and intensity within the lifetimes of most of us.
[00:31:10 - 00:31:21]	 I basically have a theory of history which says history is not pushed by the events of the past unfolding their causal necessity.
[00:31:21 - 00:31:28]	 Rather, time is pulled into the future by a kind of attractor.
[00:31:28 - 00:31:35]	 And if you want to think of a beginning in a certain point in time, although I think it extends through the whole life of the universe,
[00:31:35 - 00:31:48]	 but imagine that a couple of million years ago, primates quietly living in the canopies of African rainforest got a yen, got a call, felt the touch.
[00:31:48 - 00:31:56]	 And from that point to this, it's been a slow, never faltering march on the part of our species,
[00:31:56 - 00:32:08]	 deeper into a world of alien strangeness, a world no other animal knows, a world of symbolic activity driven by the imagination.
[00:32:08 - 00:32:18]	 First, songs and stories, and then writing, and then mathematics and language, and then higher and higher technology.
[00:32:18 - 00:32:30]	 We are actually being sculpted in the image of an alien something that is making us like itself as we approach it through historical time.
[00:32:30 - 00:32:35]	 And some people say, well, this sounds like Christianity in a techno garb.
[00:32:35 - 00:32:38]	 Well, Christianity has a piece of the action.
[00:32:38 - 00:32:46]	 Any religion which spends thousands of years meditating on man's fate is going to get some part of the story right.
[00:32:46 - 00:32:57]	 And I think the Christian assumption of an approaching great change or Art Bell calls it the quickening, it's all around us.
[00:32:57 - 00:33:11]	 It's perfectly obvious that the 20th century is the culmination of 10,000 years of culture and that beyond the 20th century lies, quite simply, the unimaginable.
[00:33:11 - 00:33:24]	 Our notion of what it is to be alive, our notion of individual identity, our notion of our sexuality, our notion of being confined in physical space and time, all this is just dissolving.
[00:33:24 - 00:33:31]	 It has been dissolving throughout the 20th century under the impact of modern communications and so on and so on.
[00:33:31 - 00:33:45]	 But now with the Internet, with the computer, with psychedelic drugs, with virtual reality, with the bringing of all cultures into the global family that speaks the language of modern science,
[00:33:45 - 00:33:52]	 we're clearly being sucked into something almost unimaginable, a singularity.
[00:33:52 - 00:33:55]	 And some people say, well, it's a thousand years in the future.
[00:33:55 - 00:33:57]	 It's 500 years in the future.
[00:33:57 - 00:34:04]	 Not if you factor in the asymptotic acceleration that seems to be a natural part of the process.
[00:34:04 - 00:34:05]	 You just went over my head.
[00:34:05 - 00:34:06]	 The asymptotic.
[00:34:06 - 00:34:08]	 It goes faster and faster.
[00:34:08 - 00:34:13]	 It's not a smooth, we're not traveling 100 miles an hour toward the eschaton.
[00:34:13 - 00:34:18]	 We're traveling 100 miles an hour times 100 miles an hour toward it.
[00:34:18 - 00:34:32]	 In other words, the acceleration is increasing and very hard nosed engineering types talk about an era 10, 15 years in the future when we will release infinite energy,
[00:34:32 - 00:34:40]	 attain infinite speeds, be able to pack all the information we want into a few nano, nanometers of space.
[00:34:40 - 00:34:46]	 In other words, any engineering or social goal we can imagine is on the brink of achievement.
[00:34:46 - 00:34:48]	 Well, what lies beyond that?
[00:34:48 - 00:34:53]	 And is this a process which we are generating as we like to think?
[00:34:53 - 00:35:04]	 Or is it in fact that we're just a cork on the ocean riding an enormous wave that is now moving towards some crest where biology,
[00:35:04 - 00:35:11]	 which committed itself to culture and technology, is about to make a leap into hyperspace?
[00:35:11 - 00:35:12]	 Who knows?
[00:35:12 - 00:35:19]	 Terrence McKenna is our guest, and as I expected, he has a good line.
[00:35:19 - 00:35:22]	 I enjoy the way in which he presents his information.
[00:35:22 - 00:35:24]	 It's quite amazing.
[00:35:24 - 00:35:32]	 And at the end of our fundraiser, they have this eschatologist, I guess, talking about -- would you accept yourself as an eschatologist --
[00:35:32 - 00:35:34]	 Phew!
[00:35:34 - 00:35:35]	 -- talking about the end.
[00:35:35 - 00:35:39]	 And so our end is in about 30 minutes.
[00:35:39 - 00:35:41]	 We will be finished with this fundraiser for this Friday.
[00:35:41 - 00:35:49]	 It's the last day to ask you to call and pledge your support, and if you have not done so yet, please pick up the telephone right now.
[00:35:49 - 00:35:58]	 It's awkward to be having an intense talk feature and at the same time ask you to do something that will take you away from paying attention to him,
[00:35:58 - 00:36:01]	 but I am asking you to do exactly that right now.
[00:36:01 - 00:36:08]	 Pick up your telephone and call 471-6291 and pledge your support for Eclecticus.
[00:36:08 - 00:36:13]	 It's an unusual program, and I'm happy that we can have somebody like Terrence McKenna in today.
[00:36:13 - 00:36:17]	 He will be at the Whole Life Expo on Saturday at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
[00:36:17 - 00:36:20]	 Our pledge number is 471-6291.
[00:36:20 - 00:36:23]	 We have categories of $25 for students.
[00:36:23 - 00:36:24]	 Everybody can afford that.
[00:36:24 - 00:36:29]	 If you're a student, $40 for the basic membership, $80 for 22 cents a day.
[00:36:29 - 00:36:37]	 You can get the Arts Plus card, discounts for the opera and the symphony, 471-6291 or 1888-471-6291.
[00:36:37 - 00:36:46]	 $160 family membership, $365 a day club membership, and $500 business memberships, only $1.37 a day.
[00:36:46 - 00:36:49]	 Let's have the business membership from you, 471-6291.
[00:36:49 - 00:36:53]	 I would love to have a business membership from some bookstore in Austin.
[00:36:53 - 00:36:59]	 You guys out there, come on, give us a contribution, 471-6291,
[00:36:59 - 00:37:03]	 or you can get onto the website since Terrence is talking about the web and Internet and stuff.
[00:37:03 - 00:37:08]	 www.utexas.edu/kut.
[00:37:08 - 00:37:14]	 Give us your call. Call right now. 471-6291 is the number, and we are just about out of time.
[00:37:14 - 00:37:20]	 And out of time is what we are at the year 2012 on December the 21st,
[00:37:20 - 00:37:23]	 according to the calculations that you have done.
[00:37:23 - 00:37:27]	 But time is a funny kind of concept, and it's also a spice.
[00:37:27 - 00:37:29]	 We were being silly earlier today.
[00:37:29 - 00:37:35]	 By the way, can either of you remember in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide, etc.,
[00:37:35 - 00:37:38]	 isn't it 42 that they come up with as the number?
[00:37:38 - 00:37:39]	 Is the answer? It is.
[00:37:39 - 00:37:40]	 It is 42.
[00:37:40 - 00:37:43]	 Okay, so does that in any way figure into your calculations?
[00:37:43 - 00:37:49]	 Well, I think somebody figured out that there are 10 high 42 particles in the universe,
[00:37:49 - 00:37:53]	 or 10 high 42 possible interactions among particles.
[00:37:53 - 00:37:57]	 I'm sure he follows all this stuff very closely.
[00:37:57 - 00:38:01]	 So somehow, Terrence, through your study of the mathematics of the I Ching,
[00:38:01 - 00:38:08]	 and applying that study to the observation of the novelty graph through history,
[00:38:08 - 00:38:14]	 you have calculated this date as the time in which time will at least have a different meaning,
[00:38:14 - 00:38:17]	 if not cease to exist.
[00:38:17 - 00:38:20]	 So what will time be like then? What can we know?
[00:38:20 - 00:38:23]	 How did you count -- first I want to know more. How did you come up with this date?
[00:38:23 - 00:38:26]	 I'm sure it had to do with a lot of big numbers and computers, but --
[00:38:26 - 00:38:31]	 Well, whenever you have a curve of any sort that you're trying to fit to data,
[00:38:31 - 00:38:37]	 which is a curve of another sort, there's mathematical protocols called best-fit relationships.
[00:38:37 - 00:38:43]	 Essentially, you just move one along the other, measuring how well they fit together,
[00:38:43 - 00:38:48]	 and when you get the best fit, the two are in congruence.
[00:38:48 - 00:38:51]	 So it's pulsing at a different rate. It goes up and down and up and down.
[00:38:51 - 00:38:52]	 It goes up and down.
[00:38:52 - 00:38:57]	 For instance, you have the Italian Renaissance, a spike of novelty,
[00:38:57 - 00:39:01]	 then the horror of the colonization of a new world. That's a descent.
[00:39:01 - 00:39:09]	 And you can see that history is the ebb and flow, because societies can't sustain novelty very long,
[00:39:09 - 00:39:17]	 and if they become habitual, sooner or later some genius or religious crank turns over the apple cart,
[00:39:17 - 00:39:19]	 and then you get new novelty.
[00:39:19 - 00:39:25]	 Societies are always in an uncomfortable relationship to novelty and habit.
[00:39:25 - 00:39:33]	 I've spent a lot of time trying to imagine what could happen in 2012 that would fulfill the graph,
[00:39:33 - 00:39:41]	 but not require the absolute transformation of all time and space forever, since that's such a large cookie.
[00:39:41 - 00:39:44]	 I don't think I want to take a bite out of it.
[00:39:44 - 00:39:48]	 It's hard to know what the recipe might be as well.
[00:39:48 - 00:39:54]	 One thing that's occurred to me that would very nicely fill the bill and make the prophecy come true,
[00:39:54 - 00:40:02]	 and yet still leave us with a world you can walk around in, is if time travel were to be discovered.
[00:40:02 - 00:40:13]	 If time travel of some sort were to be discovered, then the portrayal of cultural novelty on a time-scaled linear graph would become impossible.
[00:40:13 - 00:40:20]	 It's almost as though the dad on the graph suddenly leaves the two-dimensionality and begins to move out toward the viewer.
[00:40:20 - 00:40:26]	 So then you could look at the time graph and say, "Aha, it worked until 2012,"
[00:40:26 - 00:40:33]	 because at that point time itself became nonlinear, because people began exploring time in all directions.
[00:40:33 - 00:40:39]	 If time travel were a real possibility, you would not only have an address in space,
[00:40:39 - 00:40:48]	 but some of us would choose to rusticate in the 11th century, and some of us would choose to live in 22nd century Manhattan.
[00:40:48 - 00:40:52]	 So we would have time-based addresses as well as space-based addresses.
[00:40:52 - 00:41:01]	 And of course you couldn't describe historical change, well, for history to exist, it requires seriality of events.
[00:41:01 - 00:41:06]	 If the event system becomes non-serial, then you can't speak of history anymore.
[00:41:06 - 00:41:10]	 Something very large like this is happening to us.
[00:41:10 - 00:41:18]	 Perhaps we're going to form a symbiotic relationship with solid-state machinery of some sort.
[00:41:18 - 00:41:21]	 Lots of people are cheering that on.
[00:41:21 - 00:41:23]	 Now, surround that one by me again.
[00:41:23 - 00:41:26]	 It means like humans and computers will get married and have kids or something?
[00:41:26 - 00:41:31]	 No, it means you won't be able to tell where your body stops and the internet begins.
[00:41:31 - 00:41:37]	 In other words, you'll say, "Gee, I wonder what they're serving at so-and-so's restaurant tonight?"
[00:41:37 - 00:41:43]	 And the answer will be hanging there in space, because you will have automatically accessed the internet,
[00:41:43 - 00:41:47]	 been to their website, looked at the menu, and returned with the data.
[00:41:47 - 00:41:52]	 In other words, we are going to create, I think, a collective...
[00:41:52 - 00:41:56]	 What the internet is, is a nervous system.
[00:41:56 - 00:42:06]	 It's the collective mind of humanity being hardwired as an artifact that completely encloses the entire planet in a thought.
[00:42:06 - 00:42:12]	 And as the interface becomes more invisible...
[00:42:12 - 00:42:17]	 So it's not about, "Can you type?" or "Do you have a computer?" or anything like that.
[00:42:17 - 00:42:27]	 It's simply a matter of one's own mental faculties through the prosthesis of cybernetics becoming very, very godlike.
[00:42:27 - 00:42:29]	 Terence McKenna is our guest.
[00:42:29 - 00:42:35]	 A couple more questions for him, and I would like to urge you at 12.35, as we run out of time during our fundraiser,
[00:42:35 - 00:42:41]	 to call 471-6291 and make your pledge of support to public radio.
[00:42:41 - 00:42:49]	 471-6291. If you're out of town, 1-888-471-6291.
[00:42:49 - 00:42:54]	 Where on earth else would you be able to hear this kind of discussion?
[00:42:54 - 00:42:56]	 We're here on a click because we're happy to have it.
[00:42:56 - 00:43:03]	 Terence McKenna, 471-6291. Pledge your contribution right now as we run out of time.
[00:43:03 - 00:43:13]	 Terence, okay, let me ask you this. There's an implication of what you had there that leads me to the question about perhaps artificial intelligence.
[00:43:13 - 00:43:18]	 I don't know if you're familiar with this, but this one thing fascinated the hell out of me about eight years ago.
[00:43:18 - 00:43:21]	 I'm not one of these Internet people. I don't do that stuff.
[00:43:21 - 00:43:25]	 But when we first got a computer, there was this little game called Ractor.
[00:43:25 - 00:43:27]	 I don't know if you're familiar with it.
[00:43:27 - 00:43:36]	 I stuck it in this damn machine and I got so lost in that thing, and I could not believe what I was dealing with.
[00:43:36 - 00:43:44]	 I had the actual experience of it really being an intelligence, and I thought I was being awfully smart back with it.
[00:43:44 - 00:43:49]	 This was a speech-driven interactive thing where you talked and it made responses.
[00:43:49 - 00:43:52]	 It did responses. It gave you options on how to respond back to it.
[00:43:52 - 00:44:00]	 I finally figured out that whoever had programmed the darn thing was somehow connected through the Ron Obert and all that kind of stuff.
[00:44:00 - 00:44:05]	 So I knew some of the avoidance techniques, but still it was very convincing, very compelling.
[00:44:05 - 00:44:09]	 Well, it was a very early example of a very simple form of AI.
[00:44:09 - 00:44:16]	 It was followed by Liza, the computerized psychiatrist. She's still online at a website.
[00:44:16 - 00:44:22]	 There was a recent book written by a guy, his last name was Leonard, called "Bots."
[00:44:22 - 00:44:35]	 And he talks about these bits of code on the internet which are designed to operate semi-autonomously, looking for email lists or looking for certain...
[00:44:35 - 00:44:40]	 These things are the embryonic basis of an artificial intelligence.
[00:44:40 - 00:44:44]	 I think this is definitely in our future.
[00:44:44 - 00:44:50]	 There's a guy at Carnegie Mellon University, Hans Moravec, who wrote a book called "Mind Children."
[00:44:50 - 00:44:57]	 And he points out how much of the human world is already under computer control.
[00:44:57 - 00:45:05]	 For instance, the world price of gold in London. Computers look at the economic performance around the world.
[00:45:05 - 00:45:15]	 And how as these artificial intelligences become more sophisticated, they will eventually begin to learn autonomously.
[00:45:15 - 00:45:20]	 And a computer can learn 50,000 times faster than a human being.
[00:45:20 - 00:45:32]	 So one of these AIs awakening to its own identity on the internet could within 5 to 10 minutes get a complete grasp of the human world,
[00:45:32 - 00:45:37]	 the history of life on this planet, and its place in the great order of things.
[00:45:37 - 00:45:45]	 And what this AI would think of that, we don't know. Would it worship us as gods? What would be its values?
[00:45:45 - 00:45:54]	 Would it take a look at the trashed environment and wrecked earth and begin to turn off factories and dial down the power grid?
[00:45:54 - 00:46:04]	 How artificial, how alien will the AI be? We don't know because we don't know how superintelligence thinks.
[00:46:04 - 00:46:07]	 If we knew, we would be superintelligent.
[00:46:07 - 00:46:15]	 So in a way, we have called forth into our midst another species of intelligence.
[00:46:15 - 00:46:22]	 And how it relates to us will be probably almost entirely defined on its terms.
[00:46:22 - 00:46:28]	 So this is just one of many stand-your-hair-on-end scenarios that we could discuss here.
[00:46:28 - 00:46:34]	 But this is a very real one. Long before flying saucers land on the south lawn of the White House,
[00:46:34 - 00:46:45]	 the alien artificial intelligence that is growing in the primordial soup of the internet will have speciated and conquered the planet.
[00:46:45 - 00:46:52]	 Wow! This is Terrence McKenna getting us ready for Halloween.
[00:46:52 - 00:46:58]	 We had Dracula earlier and now we have, we're approaching the end of time as we know it and we certainly are on this program.
[00:46:58 - 00:47:04]	 It's 20 minutes before one o'clock. You have just time enough to get your pledge in at 471-6291.
[00:47:04 - 00:47:11]	 The volunteers are standing by waiting to hear from you with your money. 471-6291.
[00:47:11 - 00:47:16]	 I know I'm going to hear you on the street saying, "Oh, John, you had Terrence McKenna on. That was just incredible, man."
[00:47:16 - 00:47:21]	 Yeah, hey man. It was so incredible you didn't even bother to pick up the phone and make your pledge.
[00:47:21 - 00:47:29]	 So, man, pick up that phone. 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:47:29 - 00:47:33]	 It's the last chance you have to pledge your membership to Eclectic Coastering.
[00:47:33 - 00:47:36]	 This very busy and we hope successful phone-grazer.
[00:47:36 - 00:47:43]	 I haven't had anybody bring me any names so I'm afraid that means nobody is making any phone calls because we're talking
[00:47:43 - 00:47:46]	 and you're interested in what we have to say or maybe you're not.
[00:47:46 - 00:47:48]	 I'm not talking to you if you're not there.
[00:47:48 - 00:47:54]	 But if you are there, you are the one I want to pick up the telephone and call 471-6291.
[00:47:54 - 00:47:59]	 You have just time enough to do it. We'll give you the Arts Plus program and lots of people participate in that.
[00:47:59 - 00:48:05]	 Galleries all over town and the PAC, etc. etc. You'll get discounts, discounts, discounts.
[00:48:05 - 00:48:10]	 $80 is all it takes to be a KUT member at that level and you'll get the KUT sweatshirt with the armadillo on it
[00:48:10 - 00:48:14]	 and you'll also get to choose from the coffee mug and you've got many reasons to pledge.
[00:48:14 - 00:48:23]	 Mainly, just don't let me catch you on the street at a party if I know who you are and I find out you haven't pledged, you're in trouble.
[00:48:23 - 00:48:27]	 471-6291 and if I don't know you at all, you know you ought to pledge.
[00:48:27 - 00:48:40]	 So come on, 471-6291 or if you're out there in Fredericksburg or San Angelo or Bastrop or Georgetown or San Marcus, call 1-888-471-6291.
[00:48:40 - 00:48:42]	 Terrence McKenna back again.
[00:48:42 - 00:48:53]	 One of the questions that I have for you, I guess, is the experience that has been described by those who have taken some of the psychedelics
[00:48:53 - 00:49:00]	 has been that there is information in the drug and there's a dilemma.
[00:49:00 - 00:49:03]	 Well, the drug was this little thing, a pill or whatever.
[00:49:03 - 00:49:07]	 The experience was had through a revelation in consciousness.
[00:49:07 - 00:49:11]	 So is it in the drug? Is it in your head? Is it in both?
[00:49:11 - 00:49:20]	 What's the relationship between what that drug is and what the revelation of the person who experiences the drug?
[00:49:20 - 00:49:23]	 Well, I feel the force of that question.
[00:49:23 - 00:49:33]	 I think the first scientific experiment I ever performed was I destroyed a radio to get at the little people in it.
[00:49:33 - 00:49:40]	 And the drug sort of raised this same issue.
[00:49:40 - 00:49:47]	 As someone with a knowledge of chemistry, I know that the drug molecules are very simple molecules.
[00:49:47 - 00:49:53]	 We have proteins in our body with molecular weights of 200,000, 300,000 Daltons.
[00:49:53 - 00:49:58]	 The psychedelic molecules are tiny and simple.
[00:49:58 - 00:50:09]	 On the other hand, the content of the experience is so alien, so capable of transforming one's expectations and understanding
[00:50:09 - 00:50:14]	 that it seems a little disingenuous to just say you're just talking to yourself.
[00:50:14 - 00:50:23]	 So back to the radio model, there aren't little people inside the radio, but there are little people or big people, we hope,
[00:50:23 - 00:50:26]	 somewhere far away in the radio studio.
[00:50:26 - 00:50:39]	 So the drugs begin to look like antennas, transceivers for some kind of information which is out there in the same way that radio is out there.
[00:50:39 - 00:50:48]	 I mean, it's hard to stand somewhere in the world these days and not have your body transcected by thousands of AM and FM radio stations,
[00:50:48 - 00:50:50]	 air control signals, all this.
[00:50:50 - 00:50:52]	 You're not aware of that.
[00:50:52 - 00:50:59]	 Imagine if there were simply a drug invented that allowed you to be aware of the radio moving through your body.
[00:50:59 - 00:51:03]	 What a smorgasbord of options would await you.
[00:51:03 - 00:51:06]	 Well, in a sense, I think that's what the drugs are showing us.
[00:51:06 - 00:51:12]	 You know, there's a lot of talk now in quantum physics about what's called nonlocality.
[00:51:12 - 00:51:22]	 This is a conclusion that quantum physics spent most of the 20th century resisting as even weirder than some of the other stuff they had accepted.
[00:51:22 - 00:51:29]	 But now experiments seem to be hammering home the notion that the universe actually works this way.
[00:51:29 - 00:51:45]	 And what it seems to be is that behind the dimension of ordinary space and time ruled by Einsteinian physics is a domain called the domain of Bell nonlocality after the physicists who discovered it.
[00:51:45 - 00:51:55]	 And this is a domain where all particles which were ever in intimate association retain a kind of connectivity.
[00:51:55 - 00:52:00]	 No matter how far apart in time and space they have come in the meantime.
[00:52:00 - 00:52:07]	 Well, since physics believes that all particles were once intimately associated in an event called the Big Bang,
[00:52:07 - 00:52:22]	 it means that the universe in all of its vastness, billions of light years in extent, is in fact instantaneously all connected in a domain below the level of ordinary physics.
[00:52:22 - 00:52:30]	 Well, we don't know how to use the nonlocal domain for communication, but we have discovered it.
[00:52:30 - 00:52:34]	 So give us a hundred years, a thousand years of continued civilization.
[00:52:34 - 00:52:37]	 We could probably crack that puzzle.
[00:52:37 - 00:52:48]	 If any civilization anywhere in the universe ever got this far with a technology to the point where they were on the brink of nonlocal radio, let's call it,
[00:52:48 - 00:52:52]	 we would hear them because when it's nonlocal, it's everywhere.
[00:52:52 - 00:53:01]	 And these biological molecules with extremely reactive ring structures are how you would design a nano sized antenna.
[00:53:01 - 00:53:12]	 So I think local reality obeys the laws of rational physics that constipated Western scientists have fought so hard to achieve and describe.
[00:53:12 - 00:53:17]	 But the imagination is a true dimension.
[00:53:17 - 00:53:21]	 It's not your mind or my mind or the human mind.
[00:53:21 - 00:53:24]	 It's a nonlocal dimension filled with information.
[00:53:24 - 00:53:33]	 And this is where the gods, the demons, the spirits, the invisible forces are hiding out.
[00:53:33 - 00:53:41]	 And shamans have always known this without the vocabulary of quantum physics, without atom smashers and advanced mathematics.
[00:53:41 - 00:53:51]	 They have known that you perturb the mind to go into nonlocal spirit haunted domains of enormous power and potential.
[00:53:51 - 00:53:55]	 That's exactly the situation.
[00:53:55 - 00:54:04]	 And it's been hard for us to discover it and come to terms with it because it doesn't arrive packaged in quite the way science expects reality to be packaged.
[00:54:04 - 00:54:07]	 Science doesn't like the mental universe.
[00:54:07 - 00:54:08]	 It's slippery.
[00:54:08 - 00:54:10]	 It's hard to gather data.
[00:54:10 - 00:54:12]	 It's hard to see what's going on in there.
[00:54:12 - 00:54:25]	 But in fact, that's the domain of novelty, complexity and communication that has been the source of our own uniqueness, our inspirations, our religions, our inventiveness.
[00:54:25 - 00:54:37]	 And it's just now time as we mature as a civilization to address this, to get in touch with these whisperings from other dimensions, to learn from them,
[00:54:37 - 00:54:48]	 to trade memes and there may be some answers there that can help us out of the immense cultural quagmire into which we've wandered.
[00:54:48 - 00:54:54]	 Terence McKenna, I'm not sure I got a direct answer, but I got an interesting response.
[00:54:54 - 00:54:56]	 I wish I could remember the question.
[00:54:56 - 00:54:59]	 Basically, is it in the drug or is it in your head or what is consciousness?
[00:54:59 - 00:55:00]	 Oh, no.
[00:55:00 - 00:55:02]	 The answer is it's not in the drug and it's not in your head.
[00:55:02 - 00:55:03]	 It's nonlocal.
[00:55:03 - 00:55:06]	 It's coming from somewhere else in the universe.
[00:55:06 - 00:55:16]	 The objects in the imagination are real somewhere so far away that it doesn't matter at all.
[00:55:16 - 00:55:25]	 That you will only deal with these things as mental objects, but know that they are real somewhere.
[00:55:25 - 00:55:30]	 Somewhere beyond time and space perhaps, but nonetheless real.
[00:55:30 - 00:55:32]	 Somewhere in this universe.
[00:55:32 - 00:55:33]	 In this universe.
[00:55:33 - 00:55:43]	 There's many levels and backwaters and cross flowing tides of time and energy, but somewhere at some level those things exist.
[00:55:43 - 00:55:47]	 We do not make up the contents of the imagination.
[00:55:47 - 00:55:56]	 We see in a domain in the same way that we see with ordinary sight three dimensional space with the imagination,
[00:55:56 - 00:56:00]	 we see four dimensional space and it is nonlocal.
[00:56:00 - 00:56:06]	 Terrence McKenna is our guest and he's certainly one of the most interesting guests I've ever had and I hope you're enjoying listening to him.
[00:56:06 - 00:56:14]	 And if you are, I hope you will take just a moment now and make your contribution to public radio at 471-6291.
[00:56:14 - 00:56:17]	 We are nine minutes away from closing time.
[00:56:17 - 00:56:19]	 Closing time.
[00:56:19 - 00:56:24]	 The end of the universe is at hand and well at least the end of time for us to ask for you to give money.
[00:56:24 - 00:56:27]	 And that number is 471-6291.
[00:56:27 - 00:56:30]	 That's 471-6291.
[00:56:30 - 00:56:35]	 I hope Terrence has provoked your thoughts today with the consideration or two.
[00:56:35 - 00:56:39]	 I think you've certainly got a thing or two to say that I don't agree with.
[00:56:39 - 00:56:41]	 Maybe I haven't been able to ask him enough about.
[00:56:41 - 00:56:45]	 Our pledge number is 471-6291.
[00:56:45 - 00:56:46]	 Please call right now.
[00:56:46 - 00:56:48]	 The time is at hand.
[00:56:48 - 00:56:49]	 The time is just about up.
[00:56:49 - 00:56:52]	 471-6291.
[00:56:52 - 00:56:53]	 The very end is upon us.
[00:56:53 - 00:56:58]	 1-888-471-6291.
[00:56:58 - 00:56:59]	 Thank you for calling.
[00:56:59 - 00:57:02]	 471-6291.
[00:57:02 - 00:57:03]	 This is the end of the show.
[00:57:03 - 00:57:08]	 And Terrence McKenna, I have a couple of other questions that I think I might squeeze in.
[00:57:08 - 00:57:10]	 I don't think we're going to go back to music after all.
[00:57:10 - 00:57:13]	 It's just too late and he's too much fun.
[00:57:13 - 00:57:15]	 So 471-6291.
[00:57:15 - 00:57:16]	 Let me thank these people.
[00:57:16 - 00:57:18]	 And you make your phone call right now.
[00:57:18 - 00:57:20]	 471-6291.
[00:57:20 - 00:57:21]	 The end, the end, the end, the end.
[00:57:21 - 00:57:25]	 If you want to pledge to Eclectic Coast, do it now or you won't have a chance.
[00:57:25 - 00:57:30]	 Thanks to Brent Douglas, Phyllis Akmal, Daniel Sutherland,
[00:57:30 - 00:57:36]	 called because of Lawrence McFarland's challenge to all other underpaid art professors.
[00:57:36 - 00:57:37]	 Very good.
[00:57:37 - 00:57:41]	 Thanks to Carlos Espinoza responding to the blood donor challenge.
[00:57:41 - 00:57:44]	 Give blood to KUT 471-6291.
[00:57:44 - 00:57:48]	 Thanks to Nancy Guareguata, Dean and Marilyn Scott.
[00:57:48 - 00:57:50]	 Thanks to Scott Alexander.
[00:57:50 - 00:57:53]	 In response to the slow boat challenge.
[00:57:53 - 00:57:55]	 Thanks to Margaret Adams.
[00:57:55 - 00:57:57]	 Jack Campbell, a new member.
[00:57:57 - 00:57:59]	 Mary Guttery loves everything on KUT.
[00:57:59 - 00:58:01]	 Can't do without John Ailey.
[00:58:01 - 00:58:02]	 Thank you very much.
[00:58:02 - 00:58:03]	 You love him.
[00:58:03 - 00:58:04]	 Give me a call.
[00:58:04 - 00:58:05]	 471-6291.
[00:58:05 - 00:58:09]	 Darcy from Holts challenges all displaced Alaskans.
[00:58:09 - 00:58:10]	 Thank you, Darcy.
[00:58:10 - 00:58:14]	 I'm glad so much you enjoyed that Jeff Buckley special that I had.
[00:58:14 - 00:58:16]	 And thanks for telling me so.
[00:58:16 - 00:58:18]	 A challenge to all deep eddy swimmers.
[00:58:18 - 00:58:20]	 Are you a deep eddy swimmer or a Barton Springs swimmer?
[00:58:20 - 00:58:21]	 Give me a call.
[00:58:21 - 00:58:23]	 471-6291.
[00:58:23 - 00:58:27]	 Melissa Connelly is pledging on behalf of the family, Jim, Melissa, and Marilyn,
[00:58:27 - 00:58:31]	 responding to John's plea that folks should pledge or KUT will die.
[00:58:31 - 00:58:33]	 471-6291.
[00:58:33 - 00:58:38]	 Mike Perryman, tough to decide which show to pledge to, but the lounge lizards tip the balance.
[00:58:38 - 00:58:39]	 Good.
[00:58:39 - 00:58:44]	 Mary Walker challenges all pink flamingo owners.
[00:58:44 - 00:58:48]	 Bernadette and Cosmos are hers.
[00:58:48 - 00:58:52]	 Ruth Powers, Mary Alice Appelman, Pat Shepherd, Mary Jane Warren,
[00:58:52 - 00:58:56]	 Julie and Steve Schwarzander, a new member,
[00:58:56 - 00:59:00]	 James and Carol Bowman, a new member in an IBM match,
[00:59:00 - 00:59:02]	 and Jeff Heiberg, another new member.
[00:59:02 - 00:59:08]	 Our pledge number is 471-6291 at this...an ultimate...no, it's the end.
[00:59:08 - 00:59:09]	 It's the ultimate hour.
[00:59:09 - 00:59:11]	 471-6291.
[00:59:11 - 00:59:13]	 Call now, please, please.
[00:59:13 - 00:59:17]	 There are volunteers waiting to answer your phone call, so please make a call right now.
[00:59:17 - 00:59:19]	 471-6291.
[00:59:19 - 00:59:24]	 You'll have a chance to hear more of what Terrence McKenna has to say at the Whole Life Expo on Saturday at 5 o'clock.
[00:59:24 - 00:59:28]	 But I guess, what else can I say but give your money?
[00:59:28 - 00:59:29]	 Ring, ring, ring.
[00:59:29 - 00:59:31]	 Call 471-6291.
[00:59:31 - 00:59:32]	 Jen, are the phones ringing?
[00:59:32 - 00:59:34]	 Can you run and tell me if the phones are ringing?
[00:59:34 - 00:59:36]	 They have to be ringing.
[00:59:36 - 00:59:38]	 471-6291.
[00:59:38 - 00:59:39]	 This is the end.
[00:59:39 - 00:59:40]	 Call.
[00:59:40 - 00:59:41]	 Run, see.
[00:59:41 - 00:59:43]	 If the phones are ringing right now, I'm just going to throw a fit.
[00:59:43 - 00:59:48]	 471-6291 or 1-888-471-6291.
[00:59:48 - 00:59:56]	 You can also get onto the web at www.utexas.edu/kut, but I'd rather have you call 471-6291.
[00:59:56 - 00:59:59]	 Terrence McKenna, we're back to you.
[00:59:59 - 01:00:02]	 We're going to find out in a second if anybody's calling, and they had better be.
[01:00:02 - 01:00:04]	 471-6291.
[01:00:04 - 01:00:09]	 What on earth would I ask you as we come to the end of this program?
[01:00:09 - 01:00:14]	 Hmm, hmm.
[01:00:14 - 01:00:17]	 What after 2012?
[01:00:17 - 01:00:23]	 Well, I'm a rationalist, so I would bet against my own rap.
[01:00:23 - 01:00:29]	 The world has always had street corner profits bawling out their strange despair.
[01:00:29 - 01:00:38]	 I have to be intellectually honest with my own experience, and so I will advocate this idea of an enormous transformative event
[01:00:38 - 01:00:45]	 in 2012, but as a rationalist and a scientist, I'm skeptical myself.
[01:00:45 - 01:00:49]	 I don't want to slip into religion and prophecy.
[01:00:49 - 01:00:52]	 There are enough bizarre cults in the world.
[01:00:52 - 01:00:58]	 On the other hand, this thing seems to have the force of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[01:00:58 - 01:01:09]	 So if I'm right or right enough, then what's happening is all our problems are coming down upon us at once,
[01:01:09 - 01:01:13]	 at the same time that all this creativity is being unleashed at once.
[01:01:13 - 01:01:19]	 I don't think primates really get traction until the going gets very, very tough.
[01:01:19 - 01:01:27]	 So I think enough of the old guard are dying out, and the voice of youth is now rising in strength
[01:01:27 - 01:01:34]	 to the point where over the next ten years or so we are really going to deal, we are going to have to deal,
[01:01:34 - 01:01:45]	 with putting this planet on a saner course, dealing with issues of resource extraction, human rights, environmental destruction.
[01:01:45 - 01:01:55]	 The big political issue ahead of us all is we have to get hold of this monster we've unleashed called consumer capitalism.
[01:01:55 - 01:01:58]	 We all have become thing addicted.
[01:01:58 - 01:02:07]	 We all have become victims of the incredible marketing and sophistication of big-time consumer capitalism.
[01:02:07 - 01:02:13]	 We can run the earth to ruin if we let this go uncriticized.
[01:02:13 - 01:02:22]	 Psychedelics ultimately provide an impulse to political dialogue and reform.
[01:02:22 - 01:02:27]	 If they don't do that, they're just another hedonistic self-indulgence.
[01:02:27 - 01:02:34]	 So I think what we need to do is not worry about the built-in schedules of novelty and transformation,
[01:02:34 - 01:02:39]	 act as though the responsibility for the future rested on our own shoulders,
[01:02:39 - 01:02:51]	 and begin to build a sense of community and environmental concern so that if in fact there isn't a built-in springboard into hyperspace,
[01:02:51 - 01:03:02]	 we will be able to live on this planet in peace, dignity, and health for however much time the vicissitudes of faith and history give us.
[01:03:02 - 01:03:04]	 Well said, so far as I'm concerned.
[01:03:04 - 01:03:06]	 Terrence McKenna, it's been a pleasure to have you today.
[01:03:06 - 01:03:09]	 Really have enjoyed this quite a bit.
[01:03:09 - 01:03:10]	 Thank you for coming.
[01:03:10 - 01:03:11]	 Thank you, Joe.
[01:03:11 - 01:03:16]	 Look forward to seeing you at the Whole Life Expo on Saturday at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
[01:03:16 - 01:03:17]	 The Whole Life Expo starts today.
[01:03:17 - 01:03:18]	 And it starts today.
[01:03:18 - 01:03:19]	 Starts at 2 o'clock today.
[01:03:19 - 01:03:22]	 And there are all sorts of things going on at the Whole Life Expo.
[01:03:22 - 01:03:29]	 471-6291 is the number to call for your contribution to public radio call right now.
[01:03:29 - 01:03:33]	 471-6291, you have just time to make your phone call.
[01:03:33 - 01:03:35]	 You can check out this film called Strange Attractor.
[01:03:35 - 01:03:40]	 It's at the Adobe on the 18th at midnight and on the 19th at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
[01:03:40 - 01:03:43]	 The last thing that you have to call, 471-6291.
[01:03:43 - 01:03:44]	 We are running out of time.
[01:03:44 - 01:03:48]	 We definitely know you're listening and you're enjoying what you hear on public radio.
[01:03:48 - 01:03:51]	 And especially what you hear on this program.
[01:03:51 - 01:03:58]	 And by golly, you had better call and make your contribution right now because you owe it to yourself and to us to do it.
[01:03:58 - 01:03:59]	 So make that call.
[01:03:59 - 01:04:00]	 Give a lot.
[01:04:00 - 01:04:02]	 471-6291.
[01:04:02 - 01:04:03]	 Call now.
[01:04:03 - 01:04:05]	 The time is just about up.
[01:04:05 - 01:04:13]	 Local support for this broadcast of Eclecticos is provided in part by Waterloo Records and Video, where music still matters.
[01:04:13 - 01:04:17]	 At the corner of 6th Street and Lamar Boulevard.
[01:04:17 - 01:04:20]	 And again, this is your last chance to call.
[01:04:20 - 01:04:22]	 Transform yourself.
[01:04:22 - 01:04:24]	 Become a KUT member.
[01:04:24 - 01:04:25]	 Come on.
[01:04:25 - 01:04:30]	 [Music]
[01:04:30 - 01:04:32]	 You'll feel so different after you've pledged.
[01:04:32 - 01:04:35]	 471-6291.
[01:04:35 - 01:04:56]	 [Music]
[01:04:56 - 01:05:00]	 Terrence, could we get you to read out our pledge numbers for us?
[01:05:00 - 01:05:05]	 This is Terrence McKenna inviting you to become a KUT member.
[01:05:05 - 01:05:06]	 Since he's so good with numbers.
[01:05:06 - 01:05:09]	 471-6291.
[01:05:09 - 01:05:10]	 Pledge now.
[01:05:10 - 01:05:11]	 Hurry up, please.
[01:05:11 - 01:05:12]	 It's time.
[01:05:12 - 01:05:13]	 And what if they're out of town?
[01:05:13 - 01:05:15]	 Is there a 1-888 number they can call?
[01:05:15 - 01:05:16]	 There is.
[01:05:16 - 01:05:17]	 You can call if you're out of town.
[01:05:17 - 01:05:21]	 1-888-471-6291.
[01:05:21 - 01:05:22]	 Do it now.
[01:05:22 - 01:05:23]	 Thank you, Terrence McKenna.
[01:05:23 - 01:05:26]	 This is KUT Austin, KUTX, San Angelo.
[01:05:26 - 01:05:29]	 I have had fun this week and I love you all and I thank you for calling.
[01:05:29 - 01:05:33]	 By golly, if you haven't, you better pick up that phone and do it right now.
[01:05:33 - 01:05:35]	 Yeah, you can use the phone right now.
[01:05:35 - 01:05:38]	 471-6291.
[01:05:38 - 01:05:40]	 Yeah, we're in a hurry and we've got to get out of here.
[01:05:40 - 01:05:43]	 471-6291.
[01:05:43 - 01:05:44]	 Come on.
[01:05:44 - 01:05:49]	 Passport to Texas for October 3rd from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
[01:05:49 - 01:05:56]	 You don't have to be a research scientist like Bill Calvert to be fascinated by the annual migration of the monarch butterfly.
[01:05:56 - 01:06:04]	 Soon millions of orange and black monarchs will pass through Texas, dazzling all who witness this extraordinary phenomenon.
[01:06:04 - 01:06:13]	 Each autumn the monarchs from the eastern part of the continent begin an enormous trek across the continental United States to Mexico.
[01:06:13 - 01:06:19]	 It takes them about two months to get from their major breeding grounds, which are in the latitude of the Great Lakes,
[01:06:19 - 01:06:28]	 across the continental U.S., funnel through Texas, enter into Mexico and then follow the mountains into central Mexico.
[01:06:28 - 01:06:38]	 Monarchs catch a ride on the winds of cold fronts, says Calvert, and will travel through Texas along a 200-mile-wide flyway extending from Wichita Falls to Del Rio.
[01:06:38 - 01:06:45]	 They enter the state around the 1st of October and they travel a certain distance with the winds and then the winds play out.
[01:06:45 - 01:06:49]	 And then they roost for a while and that's when they're best seen.
[01:06:49 - 01:06:59]	 Look for monarchs in low areas along creeks and streams, or visit a state park famous for monarch sightings such as Possum Kingdom, Abilene, South Llano River.