On Radi Orbit 10-01-07

KOPN Columbia 89.5 FM my name is Mike Hagan you're listening to Radio Orbit we'll be back in just a few minutes

Good morning to you a good day to you whomever you might be

Wherever you might be welcome to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia 89.5 FM

Good to be here with you all tonight before we get things going let me give a quick thanks to Corey

New Wave Radio Theater wonderful show tonight Moon Over Morocco

That's a long series I think nine or ten weeks so if you enjoyed that you can come on back next week in the next

Actually for the next two months I think we'll be hearing segments from Moon Over Morocco great stuff thanks to Corey

Before that Kelvin and Jason do it up jazz plus blues equals harvest time

Tech Radio keeping us up on the radical world of high technology and gadgetry Jeff Wheeler

Start things off every Monday from 3 to 5 p.m. with Uncommon Light good music and talk and news super cool radio

On a waning moon Monday night

KOPN Columbia your imagination station glad to be here with you and a part of it all

All right. Thanks very much to all of you who listened and participated in the program last week a big thank you to Brian Trent a wonderful author

Writing good books most recently never grow old the novel of Gilgamesh

And of course the wonderful remembering Hypatia from a couple years back great stuff from Brian Trent

We also heard music from a group who named themselves smile smile. Thanks for the nice songs

Info mation about all the musicians I feature on the program can be found on the web at my site in the music archives

Lots and lots of good music happening all around these days tonight. We'll share some more of it with you

We'll hear the sounds of welder welder is one of the performance names that my friend Brendan Angelidis uses

But however

He is presenting himself his music is wonderful. So we'll hear tunes from welder throughout the program tonight

We started things off with impossible word

And we'll hear another song from welder in just a few minutes if you missed last week's show or any other for that matter

You can always hear them after the fact they're all on the web

www.mikehagan.com

Just slide on over to the program archives

You can get a listen to everything that we've been doing over the last few years

See what you think of it share it with others if you get the gumption, okay?

All right tonight in just a few minutes the brilliant scientist a world-class chaser of mystery and adventure a great teacher

Our good friend dr. Dennis McKenna also a special guest during our last hour if I can pull it off

But one thing at a time all right, so we'll get to Dennis in just a minute

Let me tidy a few things up real quick, then we'll get on with it

Okay, it's me Mike Hagan. You listen to radio orbit on ko pn. Columbia 89.5 FM

Dr. Dennis in just a few minutes meantime here's welder again with a quick one

It's the title track to his recently released EP. It's called bamboo snow

into radio orbit with Mike Hagan on ko pn 89.5

That's right. It is Mike Hagan

And you are listening to radio orbit on ko pn. Columbia

Okie dokie

My guest this evening is extremely close to my heart

His name is dr. Dennis McKenna

Dennis has over 30 years of interdisciplinary experience in the fields of pharmacognosy

Ethnopharmacology neurology and ethnobotany

He holds a master's degree in botany from the University of Hawaii

And a PhD in botanical sciences from the University of British Columbia

His doctoral research focused on phytochemical and pharmacological investigations of Amazonian ethnomedical plants

And he has since conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon

He's a remarkable person

He's a friend and a returning guest to radio orbit

So without further delay, we shall say hello and welcome back to Dennis McKenna

Hi, Dennis

Hi, Mike

How are you this evening?

Nice to be here again

You're welcome

Thanks for being here

And we hope you're having an enjoyable evening out there on the west coast of North America

Well, it's a typical rainy day here in British Columbia

Is that right?

Yeah

It's funny

I talked to a friend of mine in Seattle today

And not far from you, he mentioned the same thing

Well, look, Dennis, it has been over a year since we talked last on the air

So first off, as much as you'd like to say, I'd like to ask you about your recent move to Vancouver

And a little bit about your new adventures there in Canada

Okay, well, yes, it's been just about a year since I relocated up here

And so far, so good

It's been an interesting year

It's been a learning experience

I think deciding to move to another country has always got its challenges

I'm sure

But so far, so good

It's kind of an experiment, I guess, in expatriotism

But of course, as you mentioned, I got my degree here at UBC 25 years ago

So I know Vancouver, I know British Columbia

Although Vancouver is a different city than it was 25 years ago

Yeah, I was going to ask you a little bit about the scene there in Vancouver

I've heard lots, but I've never actually been there

Well, it's a great place

It's a very cosmopolitan, high-density, very ethnically diverse city

It's probably one of the five or six world-class cities

You know, it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world

But when I started here as a graduate student in 1979

So far back, it's hard to imagine

You know, it had the air of a kind of a quaint, stuffy English village

And now it's like Hong Kong or Tokyo or something like that

There are a great many more Asians

Because of the, much of it because of the Hong Kong exodus in 1997

Many people brought their fortunes to Vancouver

And it changed the face of the city

Wow, interesting

Yeah, but, you know, that's a good thing, actually

Especially if you like ethnic cuisine, which I do

You've got a lot more choices around here now

So it's a great place

All right, and the actual work that brought you there

Is for the Institute of Technology there, is that correct?

Right

I joined the BC Institute of Technology

Not having a cachet, I guess, to get a position at UBC

I accepted this job in the Natural Health Products Research Group here

And the BC Institute of Technology is basically a polytechnic school

They teach a lot of classes and how, you know, for people to get skills

Get certifications in various types of trades and so on

But they also are committed to research

And they're trying to get a research program going

So I'm in actually one of the longer-lived research programs here

The Natural Health Products Research Group

And up here in Canada, what we call dietary supplements in the States

Herbal medicines and so on

Are classified as natural health products

So it's an important distinction

Because the way those things are regulated is quite different

Right, that was my next question

What is the difference?

Well, the difference is

Dietary supplements are considered a kind of food

And natural health products are considered a kind of medicine

So they're regulated more like a medicine

Which, of course, you know, herbal supplements are medicines, really

So the Canadian regulatory framework is a little closer to reality

And acknowledges the fact that these things are used to treat diseases

That's not a claim you can make in the States

You can't claim that something is used to treat or prevent a disease

Although, of course, that is how they're used

Well, in Canada, they acknowledge that up front

And the laws are a little different

For example, you have to support your claims

With a much greater degree of scientific evidence than you do in the States

So it's a different regulatory climate

I think it's a good model for, you know, for the way this is going

It's closer to the European model

And, of course, Canada is really part of Europe

In terms of just kind of the general mindset of the country

It's really a European country

Right

Still highly influenced by, you know, ties to Britain and so on

And the Queen is still recognized as the head of state

Right, right, right

What do those regulatory laws

How do they affect accessibility on the other side, on the consumer side?

Basically, not much

You can get just about any dietary supplement here that you can get in the States

But the level of, there's a higher degree of quality control

There's more scrutiny of adverse events

But it's still OTC

Oh, yes, absolutely

They're OTC, that's right

Okay, all right

Very interesting

A person in the chat room right now just puts up a note about Codex Alimentarius

Right

Are you familiar with this?

I think you and Richard and I may have spoken about that last year

Richard Glenn Boyd

Yes

But anyway, maybe you could mention something about that

Yes, well, yes, I am to a degree

Codex Alimentarius is the kind of framework for the regulation of these products

Some people are very afraid and very nervous about that

Yeah, there's a great deal of nervousness about it

That it's going to, you know, make it impossible to, you know, go out and buy vitamin C, for example

Or that for doses of vitamins and minerals above a certain minimal dose

You'll have to get a prescription

You know, and quite frankly, I'm not sure that that's going to happen

I hear both sides

I mean, I have friends in the industry in the States who say, you know, this is never going to trump our own laws

And basically, we have to adhere to our own laws

And Codex Alimentarius is not going to make a difference

But other people are saying, no, it will take over

It's part of the globalization strategy

It's all being, you know, sort of mounted through the World Trade Organization

Conspiracy on the part of the pharmaceutical industry to take over the herbal industry

You know, I mean, there's a great deal of misinformation

And I don't really know the answer

Yeah, I don't think we're quite there yet

Although it may happen

It may come in the next few years

But, you know, it's really a question of what will people put up with

And that's really what it comes down to on a lot of fronts, I guess

Right, and as we know, people will put up with a lot

Remarkably so

And our legislators will put up with even more than the people will put up with

So, you know, it's hard to say

I mean, unfortunately, in the regulatory climate

In all of these things, money talks

And lobbyists pretty much get what they want

And the rest of us who don't have deep pockets or lobbying budgets

More or less have to go along with it

So this is, you know, one reason why people need to become more active

Although sometimes it seems, you know, it seems like it's a zero-sum game

But it's either that or give up

Right, right

And we're not about to give up

Certainly not

All right, speaking of not giving up

You know, we do have allies

And some of them are not human

And I'd like maybe to talk a little bit about

Perhaps an update on your work in Peru

And the plant compounds that you've been researching down there

And I guess maybe a question about whether that work is continuing there at BCIT

Well, okay, yes to the last question

It is continuing

I have, as I think I mentioned last year

I have had a grant for the last three years

From a private research organization

To investigate Amazonian ethnomedicinals, I guess you could say

As potential treatments for schizophrenia

That is the rationale of the grant

And I'm now on the third year of what is to be a three-year grant

However, due to bureaucratic snafus

It took a year to get the grant transferred up here

From the University of Minnesota where it was

Right

So now they've extended it for a year

Not with any additional funding

But just in order to have time to run it out

To complete the work that, you know, that we'd started

And so now it is transferred

So now I'm back at work on that

And it's gone from the field stage

Initially there was quite a bit of field work

Collecting plants and so on

Some of that is still going on

But we've had some very successful collecting expeditions

So we've got out of our initial list of 250 candidate species

That we wanted to look at

We have got about 150

So now we're in the process of sorting all that out

In terms of their chemistry

And their biological activity

We're using receptor binding assays

Which are a sort of simple, quick, and dirty way

To look at an extract

To see if there might be something in that mix

That binds to or that interacts with a receptor

A neural receptor of interest

And so this is a way to take a crude extract

And kind of profile it

Or fingerprint it, if you will

To see if it tweaks any of these receptors of interest

How do you do the assay?

Is there an animal involved or is it a human?

No, the assay is actually dead simple

Once you get it set up

It's a simple matter of

You take a radioactive drug

A drug that has been labeled with an isotope

Such as tritium

That you know is selective for a particular type of receptor

In the realms that we've discussed

For example, the hallucinogen DOB

Or DOI

These are some of the compounds that Shulgin synthesized

Very highly selective for a certain kind of serotonin receptor

Called the 5-HT2A receptor

That seems to be a common receptor

That almost all hallucinogens interact with

They may interact with others as well

But that seems to be the key receptor

So if you can get a label on something like DOB or DOI

Which happen to be halogenated for the chemists among you

Which means it's very easy to put a radioactive form of bromine or iodine

On those things

So then you basically take a rat brain homogenate

Or a homogenative tissue

You put it into some buffer

You incubate it

You add the radioactive drug

And it binds specifically and selectively to the 5-HT2 receptors

Then you put in your unknown drug

Or in this case your crude extract

Or a fraction from your extract

And you measure the concentration it takes to knock that label off

In other words, what is the concentration of the cold drug

That it takes to displace a certain amount of the label

And if it only takes a little concentration

Then you know it's pretty selective for those receptors

Right, right

So, you know, the same techniques

You just vary the label drugs that you use

You vary the tissues

So you can look at, you know, roughly 60 different kinds of receptors

Once you get the assay set up

And you can rather quickly screen quite a number of compounds

Or quite a number of extracts

I should say

Having said all that

I've done a lot of receptor binding work in my day

Back in the day

But most of this work

This initial screening work

Is being done by my colleague

Dr. Brian Roth

Yeah

At UNC Chapel Hill

Yeah, you've mentioned him before, sure

Yeah, he is the person

That worked out the pharmacology of salvia divinorin

And the person who figured out that salvia divinorin

That salvinorin A, the diterpene

Right, right

Is very selective kappa opiate

Very selective for the kappa opiate receptors

But what he also does

What he does in his spare time, I guess

Is he's the director of the National Institute of Mental Health

Has a psychoactive drug screening program

And so researchers can submit anything

As long as they have a legitimate reason to

They can submit an extract or a compound that they have synthesized

Or something that, you know, they've isolated from a plant or an animal

And they can just submit the sample and say

You know, please screen against the following bank of receptors

And you specify which receptors you want them to look at

And it's very useful

Because they screen thousands and thousands of compounds

And they're very good at what they do

They know how to do it

And they have all these assays set up

You know, you bring up salvia

And I had a question here on my list

That's sort of down toward the bottom

I thought we might get at it later

But since you mentioned it, I'll ask really quickly

A number of people have sort of caught on to the salvia thing

In the last couple of years

Even though it's been around for quite some time

But I think it's getting more into the mainstream consciousness

Perhaps in the last few years

But anyway, could you do a quick description of it

And maybe compare it to, I don't know, something like

It sounds more like a DMT flash or something like that to me

But I've never done it

And I thought maybe you could just tell people a little bit about it

Yeah, well, yes I could

Actually, before I do that

For those who might be curious about what Brian Roth does

I'm looking at his website here

This is for those that might want to just see what's going on

It's a pretty interesting website

Yeah, please give us the address

And his

The website to this psychoactive drug screening program is

HTTP colon slash slash

PDSP.MED.UNC.EDU

Right

Okay, that's Brian Robinson

It's not a very memorable name

But it's the psychoactive drug screening program

At the medical school

At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Okay, alright

Where he's located

Alrighty

So if you go to that

That's the home page

And then you can see, you know

The kinds of data

Most of their data is online

And because Dr. Roth is the

Sort of, I guess now the world's expert on salvia

He gets interviewed a lot

And there are interviews with him on

Yeah, that's my focusоне

And then you can see why

Right

And then the

You can see, but

And that's not

The

Well

Yeah...

So

Well

from NPR and so on okay yeah so just for those that are interested in in the

pharmacology of these things that might be useful to know about that website

good I just posted it up there on the on the website okay now when it comes to

salvia well salvia is it's like DMT in the sense that it's short when the leaves

are smoked it's a very short-acting experience only about 15 minutes which is

the same time frame as DMT when DMT is smoked but in almost every other respect

salvia is different one thing it's not what I call a true psychedelic DMT LSD

psilocybin mescaline you'll be all of these things are true psychedelics in

the pharmacological sense they are 5 HT to a agonist when they hit this very

selective receptor of serotonin receptors as well as others so salvia is a

completely critter of a different color it hits the kappa opiate receptor there are

basically three major types of opiate receptors the kappa the delta and the

mu receptors the mu receptor is the one that morphine for example is most

selective for although morphine is very unselective it it interacts with all three

types salvia divinorum or rather salvanorin the diterpene in salvia hits only the

kappa receptor and in that respect it's quite unusual for a drug because most drugs

hit multiple receptors at least to some degree and what's quite remarkable about

salvia divinorum it's apparently highly selective only for the kappa receptor the

kappa opiate receptor and no other receptor no other opiate receptors or any

other kind of one factor is it active orally to can you eat the stuff it is not

apparently orally active it is so-called bacon the fresh leaves are chewed but the

absorption is through the mucous membranes in the mouth not through the gut and then

of course the diterpene itself is while dried leaves can be absorbed much more

quickly and it passes away much more quickly and in terms of effect associative

anesthetic its effects are like ketamine causes like sort of a complete

feeling that you're out of your body you know it car because in fact I'm not an

expert on on the effects many people are more experienced with it I I don't care

for it I mean even an old cycle not like me finds this stuff highly peculiar you

know one aspect of it is I mean one aspect of it is what do you bring back yeah

what do you get out of it sure what do you get out of it is the question and I

don't get much out of it other than just a feeling of you know gee that was weird

you know much the same could be said of DMT in the smoked form you know DMT is a

true psychedelic when it's smoked though the effects are so overwhelming and so

fast right that by the time it's over with you're sort of just left shaking your

head and saying you know my god I know something profound happened but what was

right it's so so quick it's hard to hold on to which is of course with DMT one

gets around that with the whole ayahuasca business you know which DMT in the

orally potentiated form lasts much longer okay all right real quick before we take a

break Hefter how things at Hefter are you still involved yes I'm absolutely still

involved with Hefter and things are going very well good excuse me I'm hiccup in

here yeah things with Hefter are going well we're continuing to try to raise

money and we're sponsoring several different clinical studies the notable one

right now that is still actually in the latter in the winding up stages is Charlie

Grobes Dr. Charles Grobes study with psilocybin in terminal stage cancer patients to look at the

anxiety to help as a adjunct to psychotherapy and dealing with the fact that people are

dying very positive results are coming out of that and there there are now two other

studies that are about to start which are which we're partly supporting one of the

encouraging developments on all this is that because the the cancer terminal cancer patients

study has turned out so well and we pretty much established that psilocybin is safe to give to

people even in you know even in a fairly severe state of compromised health it's an inherently non-toxic

compound yeah so it's opened up the possibilities that the sort of inclusion criteria for the next

trial will not be limited to terminal patients it can actually be expanded to patients who are not

necessarily terminal but may be having difficulties dealing with their illness and the resolution of all

that so it opens it up to a much wider um group of patients population yeah and it's just another step on the

on the road to the notion that uh in the not too distant future this these options may be available to

people i mean that's sort of on the political side the whole rationale uh of doing this but other than

simply doing the research which is worth doing in itself but on the on the on the political agenda or

the medical agenda the idea is that if you can do some clinical studies show that a compound like

psilocybin is both safe to use and effective for what it's being used for then you can apply to the fda

for orphan drug status and you essentially can create a situation where you know you can have medical

psilocybin uh just like we have medical marijuana which of course is you know implacably opposed by the

federal government but endorsed by a number of states right hopefully the fda has not been so politicized

uh that the decisions will be based uh that the decisions will be based on politics there are still

some in the fda who cleave to science and our experience has been at least the group we're working

with you know if we show the evidence then they'll give the approval so so that's the whole that's the

kind of steps that this thing has to go through before it's available for general practice okay well it's uh

it's a better position than we were in a couple years ago for sure yeah in in spite of the political

climate you know as a matter of fact so right well sometimes the most uh unexpected developments

happen in the worst of times isn't that the truth so okay all right look let's uh take a little break

okay okay all right we'll come back in just a minute everybody it's mike you listen to radio orbit

on ko pn columbia 89.5 fm my guest is dr dennis mckenna you can find information about dennis well

probably the best thing is to go to my site and there's links to uh lots of different uh areas

where where dennis can be investigated over there at hefter also at arrowwood there's an interesting

page about dennis and of course there's uh some stuff over at bcit or just uh go to your favorite

search engine and put in dennis mckenna i'm sure you'll come up with uh as much as you can handle all

right okay in the meantime this is ko pn on the web at ko pn dot o r g we'll play a piece of music

here from a good friend eskimo slash welder slash brendan angelitas and we'll come back with dr dennis

in just a couple minutes it's mike you're listening to radio orbit on ko pn columbia and this song is

called isle of sky of sky that's eskimo on ko pn columbia 89.5 fm my name is mike hagan you're

listening to radio orbit good to be with you all tonight about 11 45 now on the first of october

can you believe it 2007 the time just rolling right along as it tends to do these days but uh

we're into the last couple months of the year and we're going to close them out in wonderful fashion

starting tonight with dr dennis mckenna good friend of ours from the program here from vancouver

british columbia and back with us right now hi dennis hi mike yeah i want to shift gears just a little

bit and uh ask you a question uh that has been on the on the minds of quite a few of our listeners as

well as myself and it has to do with technology and nature you know as i do this radio show dennis

i talk to lots and lots of people doing all kinds of different things and you know there's lots of

different ways to classify people and ideas and this sort of thing but i notice sort of two camps

that are very strong about their beliefs right now and they're sort of the the one is the the back to

nature camp which says you have to deny technology resist technology pretty much throw away the stuff

that that has sort of gotten us into the uh situation in many cases where we find ourselves and then

there's the other camp that is sort of the opposite of that that says you know technology is what it's all

about and and nature essentially should be either discounted or considered you know a bitch to be

reckoned with and and and dominated i guess the question in quick fashion is can they coexist in

harmony or does it have to be one or the other how how do you see well i think it's a false i think

it's a false dichotomy um you know because they do obviously they have to they have to coexist in

harmony and everything is natural right we are part of nature and uh i think a lot of the hubris and the

problems that we've created for ourselves is our failure to recognize and acknowledge this you know

that we are part of nature and we have to live uh in a way that is harmonious to nature nature is not

simply for us to exploit um it it doesn't work that way nature you know that's been the model for

the last well essentially since the founding of the industrial revolution and now we're beginning

to see the consequences of this sort of rapacious approach to nature uh if we keep it up it's obviously

not sustainable and there is no miracle technological fix uh i mean but there but having said that i think

that technology is always a part of the solution it's definitely part of the solution even technology

though is part of nature because we are part of nature and it's the human mind that dreams these

things up these technologies uh you know uh it i'm reminded of the off often repeated debate about

natural versus synthetic compounds you know in in the natural products industry you know natural is somehow

better you know but they're overlooking the fact that even synthetic compounds were made by completely

all natural organic chemists you know who are part of nature you can't get away from it you really can't

get away from it nor do you want to i mean nature has a tremendous amount to teach us still you know and

it's not in our interest to uh to destroy it it's in our interest to sustain it because we can't live

without it i mean if you simply look at global warming all of the environmental crises if you think about

our relationship to the plant kingdom i mean it's as simple and stark as that you know plants absorb

carbon dioxide they release oxygen without oxygen we wouldn't be here to talk about it and plants are the

main source of oxygen in the atmosphere so we're involved in a symbiosis with the plant kingdom with the biosphere

uh symbiosis maybe more accurately a kind of parasitism because plants could get along fine without us but

i'm not sure in fact i know for a fact that we could not get along without them right not only do they

clean the air and and and do all kinds of things to the soil but they they create all these secondary

compounds that that are so helpful to us that are so helpful to us i was reading a review a while back in the

journal of natural products uh which is a scientific journal but it was a review on drug discovery and

natural compounds you know uh in in the drug discovery realm and pharmaceutical research there's always a

tendency to say well you know it's too much trouble to go to the rainforest and collect plants we can just

hire chemists and they can synthesize things in the laboratory all day and we'll just you know and we

don't have to negotiate with indigenous peoples about intellectual property rights everything we invent is

our own and you know we don't need plants as sources of new drugs even though we've only looked at only

about 10 percent of all plant species as sources of new medicines new drugs remarkable but this uh this article

was pointing out that between 1981 and 2002 which is the era that they have statistics to cover there

were about 827 new compounds truly new what they call in the industry new chemical entities or new molecular

entities that went from discovery to the clinic in other words discovery to all of the through all of the

regulatory hoops all the screening hoops and so on to become actually approved by the fda as a new

as a new drug of the 827 or so compounds that went through this process 61 percent were natural products wow

so uh you know it's it just doesn't the notion that we don't need natural products

products to provide the ideas for new compounds it simply doesn't wash

well on on the other side of it the the technology side you know people have this idea too that

technology is sort of a new thing that it i don't know maybe the industrial revolution but the technology

of course goes back to the chipping of the first stone or right it depends how how far back do you want

to go yeah the clovis point is certainly a technological artifact what what does seem to

have made a difference since the industrial revolution and now we're seeing sort of the

next turn of the spiral with the coming of the information age is the acceleration of technology

and i think that is one of the thing it's both frightening and encouraging the reason it's taking

place is because the density of information that we're surrounded by has increased exponentially and

first with the printing press and then with mass media like radio and television now with the internet

you know we're just sort of you know riding on this sea of information and sometimes drowning in it

you know it's very hard to keep up with a lot of this and yet you know this this is what is driving the acceleration

i am sure you probably even had uh ray kurzweil on your program well his his partner uh

terry grossman has been on the program i've never interviewed ray but i'm very familiar with his work yeah

okay well he's i think he is

one of the sort of leading lights that is articulating this notion that we are heading

you know full tilt towards some sort of technological singularity or some sort of singularity where

the rules of the game become so radically transformed that the world won't even resemble what it resembles now

uh and you know i'm not sure that i buy it completely because you know i don't think that

that the world can be sustainable in the absence of nature at least not given the level of technology

that we have now we're not in a position to build space colonies we're not in the position to

you know build generation ships and send them out into the galaxy in search of a new home i mean we're

stuck with the one we've got for the moment and uh you know we have to uh we have to pull our act

together you know uh i think about nanotechnology and you and i have talked a lot about this actually in

the past but you know the more i think about it and i'm in manufacturing during the day you know and so

we make things and and but i'm also getting much more interested in in molecular manufacturing and

this sort of thing which essentially is just an aping of nature again i mean eventually what seems to be

the the goal is that we could build things the way nature does so we would no longer have to have to

do all these things that are so devastating to the environment just in order to make stuff yes that's

right although although we should also be aware that nanotech brings with it its own set of

environmental concerns and other types of concerns but nanotech is definitely coming on it's it's not

coming on in the way that eric drexler and the people that were sort of the pioneers of the idea

envisioned it but it is happening and it's happening uh you know like all technological advances you

know it's silly to debate in a way whether we will do it we will do it right if that if it's within

our capability we will do it if these things are going to happen you know this whole debate that's

growing up now around synthetic life you know if we can build synthetic life we will build synthetic

life so the thing to you know the thing to put in place is not stop it because we can't stop it

there'll always be a mad scientist somewhere you know who will do it if it's within capabilities

so the thing to do is to go forward with your eyes open be clear about you know both the upside and the

downside of these types of of technologies and i think that's we're right at this stage right now

with nanotech where we were back in the 70s with biotech and you know some have argued that

you know i mean at that time there was much discussion about whether there should be a moratorium

on genetic engineering and recombination recombinant dna and this sort of thing right well there really

wasn't and to a certain degree we've paid the consequences of that you know now there is

concern that these genetically engineered organisms are escaping into the environment contaminating

wild genomes and this sort of thing we're at the point now where we can be clear about technology

it hasn't really escaped from the lab although it it in some minor forms it has but we need to be

asking the questions now you know what are the dangers of it what are the advantages of it what can it do

what should it not do you know ultimately it comes down to human choice i mean i've always

argued strongly for the notion that no no thing no technology no technique no object has moral qualities

only human behavior has moral quality right how we use all these things this comes up in the drug

discussion all the time you know because the drug the discussion about psychoactive drugs you know on

the policy level so often has to do with the demonizing of the drugs as though the drugs had will and behavior

as though they were you know somehow evil intelligent entities drugs are simply chemicals you know they have

a certain action on the body how humans use drugs that's where the moral issues come up and very much the same

thing comes with nanotech or any other or biotech or any other type of technology it's always a two-edged sword it

can be used for harm or or not you know and it's never really one or the other there's always advantages and

disadvantages just mentioning speaking of nanotechnology uh i think scientific american just brought out a

special issue on the topic if anybody's interested you can it's on the stands now i just read it

some good articles in there all right in in the most recent scientific american yeah i think it was

either the regular issue or a special issue i just got it off the newsstand but it's it's there now and

really good articles which which you know were useful i mean some of them are kind of dense but it's useful

in terms of getting a perspective of you know this is real nanotechnology this is what is actually being

done rather than the sort of science fiction vision you know not that i'm criticizing him i mean he

had the vision but you know i mean there were certain things that were glossed over one of the big

challenges for nanotech has always been the notion of how do you build the assembler which is this

postulated machine that can replicate itself and make more and more machine more assemblers

um because you can't really do it with atomic force microscopes you can't make these things

one by one you know you have to be able to make trillions of them at the same time that's what they're

working on and of course biology still i mean biology is nanotechnology it's the closest

model that we have so you know i think a lot of nanotech as it eventually emerges and becomes more

important as part of our daily life it's going to look a lot like biology it's going to be biomimetic

as they say amazing uh everybody it's top of the hour midnight straight up you're listening to radio

orbit on kopn 89.5 fm in columbia missouri my name is mike hagan we're listening to our good friend dr

dennis mckenna on the line with us from vancouver british columbia dennis what about nanotechnology

and medicine are you seeing the similar effects in that particular absolutely well yeah this this issue of

scientific american discusses that quite a bit because obviously one of the uh one of the earliest one of

the most important applications is for medicine for uh initially for diagnostics because you can

you know even with the techniques they're building they're they're exploring now you can build tiny

sensors that essentially can go into cells or you can apply cells to them and they can

you

detect, for example, cell surface markers for tumors and this sort of thing.

Another aspect of nanotechnology, it turns out that DNA is a great material to work with.

I mean, we think of DNA as what carries the genes and it replicates itself and all that,

which it does, all those things.

But chemists are using DNA essentially as scaffolds, these nanomachines.

And there's quite a bit of a question of that in this special issue about how DNA can be sort of repurposed,

reverse engineered, if you will, to nanotechnological applications.

The whole thing is just so sci-fi.

When I close my eyes, it's like a psilocybin experience or something because you see the twisting geometry.

I can almost see it in my head.

Yeah, yeah.

Man, oh, man.

Which, of course, raises the issue of what do you see when you take psilocybin?

What are these things?

I mean, they do, on some level, seem to be machines or, you know, super technological artifacts of some sort.

You can't really tell.

But in a way, imagination reaches.

And nanotech and really all technology, if you think about, emerges because somebody imagines.

Yes, somebody dreamed it up.

Somebody dreamed it up.

They first had an idea, right?

If they had an image and then they realized the image or actualized the image in the physical world, you know,

maybe they simply had an idea for, well, if I cut this stone a certain way, it'll be sharper, you know.

And, I mean, that's not a very, you know, it's not a very far out idea,

but it's essentially visualizing something and making it happen.

And now we have tools to do that that are even more powerful.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's sort of the dream of nanotechnology.

We're, you know, we're there with information technology, although it's not a perfected, that isn't perfected.

But we're able to move bits around.

We're able to move information around in very efficient ways and put it and configure it exactly as we want to.

So, that's the dream of nanotechnology, except we want to be able to do it with atoms.

Right.

You know, instead of ones and zeros, we want to actually be able to move physical building blocks of matter around in these very precise ways.

Amazing.

You know, we spoke a little bit earlier about cancer.

You know, it's been an interest of yours for a long time, I know.

Do you think that we're close?

I mean, do you think we're going to get a chance to cure this stuff?

Well.

I mean, it's amazing to me that we haven't yet, frankly.

It is surprising.

It's surprising, especially when you consider, you know, of all the wars that have been declared on this, that, and the other thing,

the war on drugs, the war on terrorism.

Nixon declared the war on drugs around 1970, I believe.

And about the same time, he also declared the war on cancer.

And what does it say?

Both have been spectacular failures.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Actually, I mean, in some ways, cancer therapy has not advanced much beyond what was available.

My mother died of cancer in 1970, and the techniques that they were using to treat her were radiation

and surgery and chemotherapy, and this is essentially the same techniques that are being used now.

The chemotherapeutic, there have been some advances.

There are better, excuse me, there are better chemotherapeutic agents, although that many are still pretty toxic.

You know, they've gotten better on the diagnostic side of it.

They've gotten better at diagnostics, and that's a big part of it, because if you can catch these things early,

then you have a much better chance of arresting it.

I think, I mean, I'm certainly no oncologist, but I think where the real promise lies in cancer therapy

is some of these immunotherapies that are coming up, because in some ways cancer is a dysfunction of the immune system.

It's basically a failure of the immune system to detect these alien cells at a stage before they proliferate,

and there are whole parts of the immune system that are like this internal watchdog to,

because everybody is getting cancer all the time, right?

Cells mutate, and they start to proliferate, and the immune system targets these things

and X's them out before they have a chance to get going.

Well, when those mechanisms fail, then you have cancer, and what's interesting about,

well, there are many interesting things about the immunotherapies,

but the most promising immune therapies for cancer go straight back to traditional Chinese medicine,

because these medicinal mushrooms, such as reishi and turkey tail,

termites, versicolor, and all of these mushrooms that the Chinese medicine has used for thousands of years,

medicinally, it turns out they contain a group of compounds called polysaccharides or beta-glucans.

They're these polymers made of sugars, basically, but these are immune stimulants,

and they are being used to sort of activate the immune system.

They have been used in clinical context in China and Japan for a long time,

and there are even medications on the market in Japan, one called PSK,

that is a highly purified form of one of these polysaccharides, one of these beta-glucans,

and it's routinely used in cancer therapy in Japan, along with conventional therapies.

But we're only now beginning to sort of put the science under that and understand how these things work.

I was involved in a project before I left the University of Minnesota.

I was sort of peripherally involved in a multi-year, multi-center project looking at termites, versicolor,

which is called the turkey tail mushroom.

Okay.

One of the better research mushrooms that's being used for this.

Interesting.

And it turns out it's not only mushrooms.

It turns out everything, virtually all plants, bacteria, fungi, yeasts,

which are a kind of fungus, photosynthetic plants, aloe vera,

they all have these polysaccharides, these immune-modulating polysaccharides.

Well, it's interesting.

There are two things that sort of come to mind.

First of all, my intuition is that it's going to come from a plant.

There's going to be a cure that comes from a plant.

But there's a friend of mine who researches a particular mushroom called the cordyceps,

it's cordyceps siensis, I think it's called.

Sinensis.

Sinensis, that's what it is, yes.

Yep.

And he's had some encouraging results and responses from that particular strain of mushroom, too.

Mm-hmm.

At any rate, well, I'll tell you, how about we take another short break

and we come back and do one more segment?

Sounds good.

Sounds good?

All right, everybody, we'll do that.

It's Mike.

We'll come back with Dennis McKenna in just a few minutes.

In the meantime, let me give you a little bit of information about what's happening here.

You're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

My name is Mike Hagan, and information about this program and the program itself will be up

on the web in the archives section in just a day or so.

You can find all that information over there at www.MikeHagan, H-A-G-A-N.com.

A big thank you to Dr. Dennis for spending some time with us this evening over there from

his place in British Columbia.

We'll get back to him in just a minute, let everyone take a breather, and we'll play

a piece of music here from a friend, Brendan Angelitas.

Going by the name of Welder on this particular project, this is called The Fabric of Space.

It's Mike, you're listening to Radio Orbit, K-O-P-N, Columbia.

The Space, that's Welder.

Information about my friend Brendan on the web at www.weldersounds.com.

You can also find him on MySpace at myspace.com slash Welder Sounds.

All right, it's Mike, you're listening to Radio Orbit.

On K-O-P-N, Columbia.

My guest is Dr. Dennis McKenna.

You can find information on the web about Dennis.

You know, Dennis, I suppose I should give out the Hefter address, but is there anywhere

else you'd like people to go?

Yeah, well, yes, the Hefter address, definitely, which is www.hefter.org.

It's H-E-F-F-T-E-R.

All right, Hefter.org.

And you can also find a lot of information about Dennis and his work at my site.

We've had a number of previous programs.

One last year in May, I guess, with Richard Glenn Boyer, which was very interesting.

A wonderful program with Stephen Herod Buhner a couple of months before that.

And then Dennis was on back, believe it or not, back in 2004 in November.

So, lots of great stuff there in the archives, and if you'd like to dig around in there, I'm

sure you'll find some gems.

Okay, Dennis, thanks for sticking around.

Okay.

All right, let's see here.

Where should we go?

A lot of folks are asking about 2012, but the time wave and all that business was, for

the most part, Terrence's baby, and I don't really expect you to speak to it.

But I would, however, like to ask you just about your general sense of the future through

your own lens and the work that you're doing and, you know, the relationship that you have

with other people in all these interesting fields.

Yeah, I mean, it was basically Terrence's baby.

It was his idea.

And I think it has a lot of merit in certain respects.

I think that he has a certain insight into the structure of the I Ching.

I'm kind of one of the chief skeptics, though, when it comes to the claim that it actually

describes the structure of time.

I think there are so many holes in that argument, it's very difficult to defend that notion.

But in a larger context, I think there is, there does seem to be a building, a great deal of

expectation around 2012, whether you're coming at it as a, you know, a fan or a devotee of

the time wave or whether you're into the Mayan calendar, all of these things, many things.

There's a great deal of sort of millenarian expectations around the 2012 date.

And I don't know what to make of it.

I'm kind of skeptical.

I mean, I'm actually quite skeptical.

And in a way, I think, I'm not even sure that this speculation is that healthy.

Because it's a certain, you know, it's a strategy for not facing up what we're faced with.

I mean, it's really, in some sense, it's no more constructive or useful than the expectation

that Jesus is going to come and save us.

Or our alien brothers are going to come in starships and save us.

You know, maybe so.

I mean, we can all hope for that.

We shouldn't count on it.

Because most likely, it's not going to happen.

So in a way, this is another head in the sand strategy.

Let's just all wait around until 2012 when there'll be this tremendous wave that will

change consciousness in a global sense.

I mean, you know, God, I hope so.

Right, right.

But, you know, I'm too much, I'm too old and I'm too much of a cynic, basically, to put

much faith in that.

I mean, when people say, well, you know, what's going to happen on 2012?

My response is, we're very close.

Let's wait and see.

Right, at this point.

But, you know, don't cancel your appointments for 2013.

Yeah, it is sort of, like many things, it can have a cop-out-ish side of it, sort of, where

you think, well, I guess we don't have to do anything.

The human species has tremendous ability for denial, right?

And for sort of when reality is staring us in the face, we can, you know, we're very good

at, you know, just denying that it's there.

Look at the whole global warming issue or look at what, you know, our government does

on a daily basis.

I mean, talk about not being based in reality.

And yet, you know, because they are who they are, and obviously their pronouncements are not

reality-based, but the rest of the world is forced to deal with that and take it seriously.

So, yeah, 2012, who knows?

Yet we are in a situation, as you say, and we are close.

We're five years away.

Right.

And we do have a lot of situations in many different areas that are sort of reaching critical.

Something's got to give, it seems.

Well, it seems so, yeah.

I mean, a lot of things seem to be reaching critical mass, but, you know, the trends that

I've seen, there's a great deal of hopeful expectation around 2012.

The trends that you can read about in the newspapers daily are, you know, things are not hopeful.

Not quite so hopeful.

There could be a critical change, but not particularly one that we would welcome.

Yeah, you know, everybody sort of agrees that the changes are coming, but, you know, the

question of whether they're going to be the New Age lovey change has not been determined.

I mean, I don't think there's any way to, certainly as you say, the reality of the news

of the day doesn't seem to point in that direction.

No, no.

And there's really no way to, obviously there's no way to know it.

If you look back through history, you know, the number of critical juncture points of history

that have been fairly grim, far outweigh the number of junctures that have been hopeful

or optimistic.

You know, and again, it comes back to essentially our place in the cosmic scheme of things.

You know, we have only one planet.

It's a very fragile ecosystem.

We don't really know if we're the only ones in the universe or not.

Probably not.

Reason would say that, you know, probably not.

What is it about us that makes us unique?

But we don't have any actual evidence that there are aliens, that there are others out there.

So we're pretty much stuck.

Even if they are, the distances in time and space are so vast.

I mean, if you discount the whole UFO phenomenon and all this other stuff,

which I'm not automatically discounting it,

but I think that, you know, the level of evidence, it all comes down to this, Mike.

I don't know who said it, but I firmly believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And, you know, I haven't seen the extraordinary evidence that supports these kinds of claims.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And I also think, though, one of the things that I think would be helpful is that

extraordinary claims also require extraordinary investigation.

Yes.

You know, and sometimes you don't get the investigation that you might like to get from, you know,

people that might have the means to do it.

But at any rate, all right, let's move along just a little bit.

By the way, Dr. John Sheliak, who's listening to the program, says hello.

Well, hello to him.

Speaking of the time wave, yeah.

Right.

He's wonderful.

John and I have become friends, and he's...

And he's been on your show.

He has.

He was actually here in town last weekend, and he spent a couple days with me at my home,

and we had a wonderful time together.

He's a wonderful, wonderful guy.

Right.

I've never met him, but I've read some of his material, and actually he wrote me an email not long ago saying that he would like to put some of his...

He's been working very assiduously on the time wave.

Oh, he has.

Being a mathematician and a physicist, I think that, you know, if anybody can put legs under the time wave, he might be the guy to do it.

Yeah.

Well, I have an open mind, and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with.

All right.

I won't speak for him, but I can tell you that he certainly has the...

He's working, for sure, and he's very interested in continuing the work.

And I think that's interesting alone, because he is a very intelligent guy, and if he thought there wasn't anything there,

I don't think that he would continue with the effort that he's continuing with.

Quite right.

At any rate, okay, you know, maybe there's a radio program there in the future.

I don't know.

You and Dr. John, I could see that happening.

That's possible.

All right.

Well, we'll see.

Okay.

The word planet, you make me think, and then the word plant, we've been talking.

They're very close, the two words.

The 2012 business, the social and cultural crisis that we're in the middle of, are the plants an ally that can help us get through?

And I know your answer, but, of course, I'd like you to talk about it.

Well, yes.

Obviously, my answer is that they are.

I think the third word that is part of that trilogy is plan, right?

Plan, planet, plant.

And it may be that, you know, people that are familiar with the use of these psychotropic plants and shamanic traditions

and, you know, their traditional use in the context of shamanism will tell you that it's just sort of a given.

It's really conventional wisdom that these plants are intelligent.

And the plants are, in some ways, messengers from the community of species, I think, is one way you could put it,

a way that the community of species has evolved to, in some ways, communicate with this out-of-control ape

that's somehow gotten loose on the surface of the earth, you know, with this hypertrophy brain and, you know, is running amok.

And the plants, the psychotropic plants, the psychedelic plants are there to sort of, say, ease off, you know, or wake up or, you know, consider your origins.

So, yes, I definitely think that, you know, the psychedelic plants play a very important role in sort of the evolution of consciousness at this cusp in history.

It may be, you know, they may be one of our only hopes.

So, you know, I do agree with that.

So, in a sense, the plants really aren't just chemistry.

Well, the shamans will tell you that they're not.

I mean, they don't, I mean, no, they're not just chemistry.

I mean, that's not our subjective experience when we encounter them.

Absolutely.

There are obviously chemical properties that the plants have that give them the unique ability to interact with our neurochemistry in a certain way.

So, they are chemistry, but it's not just chemistry.

You know, again, what is just chemistry?

I mean, you know, what is matter anyway?

And the fact that matter can have these qualities.

I mean, look, for instance, at a compound like DMT.

You know, it's a very simple compound.

It's two steps from tryptophan.

Right, right, right.

You know, early on when I was interested in these things, one of the things about DMT, the experience that it can elicit,

one of the things about that that impressed me most was, well, you know, if a simple molecule like this can do that,

then maybe there's more to just chemistry than we imagine.

Yeah, you've made it, actually, in a very comical little segment that you had on a show we did with Stephen Buhner,

you made it really clear that essentially that's all what we are.

We're just chemistry.

Well, obviously we are.

Right, right.

Okay.

I mean, in my lectures I sometimes mention to people, you know, the notion of a drug-free America or a drug-free school is completely absurd

because we are drugs and we're made of drugs.

And I thought this was an original observation.

It turns out Salvador Dali said this.

Wow.

I am drugs, he said.

Amazing.

And so he got it.

He got it, for sure.

And look at his artwork, you'll get it.

Right.

All right.

Dennis, a listener says he considers you a, quote-unquote, reluctant shaman

and asks what it would take for you to re-evaluate the events of 1971 in La Chirera.

Is there anything that would ever make you go back there and re-look at the stuff that happened?

Well, what do you mean, re-evaluate it?

I don't know.

I think I can't speak for him.

The way I'm interpreting his question is that, is there something that might happen that would make you say, wait a minute, we actually were on the ball back then or something?

Well, if something that ruptured plain on December 21st, 2012, happened, I'd have to take a second look at it.

You know, if the violet crystal lens were to materialize in my backyard and the doorway slide open, yeah, I'd have to reconsider it.

I'd have to reconsider it.

Okay, so that's what we're looking for.

But I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

All right.

I mean, I'd love to be surprised.

Yeah, I think so.

I think all of us would.

All right.

Let's see.

Here's one that just comes up that's sort of a biological one.

Dennis, are there more serotonin receptor sites in the gut than in the brain?

I've heard that there are, but I'm not sure where that information comes from.

It's a good question, though.

There are serotonin receptors all over the body.

And, in fact, serotonin was first discovered as a hormone helping maintain vascular tone.

That's what it means, serotonin, you know, in the bloodstream and having hormone-like effects before it was ever discovered in the brain.

But the same is true of many types of neurotransmitter receptors.

I mean, there are, for example, all the opiate receptors.

Most neurotransmitters.

receptors are well represented in the gut, you know, which makes sense because the gut

and the neural structures come from the same embryological origins.

Okay.

Here's one that's a personal question for me, okay?

Okay.

I've been experimenting with, you know, I like to grow things, and I'm always messing

around with my plants and mushrooms and stuff like this, and I became familiar with this

guy whose name is Luther Burbank.

Do you know who he was?

Oh, yes.

Right?

Yeah.

Well, I was fascinated by his story because scientists, for the most part, looked at him

as sort of a heretic or something, yet he was very successful in doing what he tried

to do in creating these new, essentially new species of plants.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I guess I'd like you to talk to that a little bit.

Well, he was an inspired botanist.

I mean, he is one of these figures.

He's a bit like, he is a bit to the plant world, the same as Nikola Tesla was to the world of

engineering.

You know, I mean, the man, Tesla was a visionary.

Yes.

He imagined all these machines, and then he created these machines.

Yeah.

He was a total, gone visionary.

Yeah, one of my heroes, yeah.

And Luther Burbank was much the same, but he just seemed to have the touch.

I mean, he had, it wasn't simply a green thumb, you know, there was something about him that

he had an extraordinary talent for growing plants and for breeding plants, and he was

just a genius of the plant kingdom, of plant breeding.

And this is long before genetics and any of that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

Yeah, purely Mendelian.

He was able to do it all with just Mendelian genetics.

How can we do that?

How can we do it?

Yeah.

You know, I mean, with people like, sure, we can do it, but people like that, they just

have innate talent.

I mean, that's what genius is.

How can you, that's like saying, well, how can we be like Tesla?

Well, you know, I don't know.

I mean, I think you have to, you have to have a certain talent.

You have to basically be a genius, and then you have to have the ability to, you know, acquire

the tools, the knowledge that you need to apply that genius.

And these guys were just in the right historical time and place to be able to do that.

Okay.

What else you got on the docket?

What's happening in your world?

You got classes that you're teaching?

I know sometimes you go to Hawaii in the wintertime.

No, I'm not teaching any classes here at BCIT.

This is, this is all research, although there's a lot of teaching that goes on here.

But I'm not part of it, which is kind of disappointing, because I do like, I enjoy teaching.

And yes, my course in Hawaii is going forward.

We're pretty much fully booked for this year, and this will be the fifth year straight that

we've done it.

So, still titled Plants and Human Affairs?

It's called Plants and Human Affairs.

And of course, my co-teacher on that, my co-instructor is Kat Harrison, who is Terrence's ex-wife.

We're still getting along fine.

Good.

And we're looking forward to teaching that.

We're actually considering offering some version of it in Peru next summer.

Yeah, you mentioned that to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm enthusiastic about the idea.

I want to do it.

And Kat is, I'm trying to convince Kat that we should do it.

Mm-hmm.

Wonderful.

You know, she, she's also enthusiastic, but it's like, it just seems like so much time.

Right.

And it's quite a challenge to get it going.

And then I say, well, if we start now, you know, we'll be ready.

So, yeah, I'm hoping we can do that.

I still have my affiliation with the University of Minnesota.

I may go back there in a few months.

I'm not convinced I'm going to make this trip to Canada or this move to Canada permanent right

now, but it hasn't been a bad experience at all.

It's mostly personal reasons that would take me back.

Have you been to Peru this year?

I have not made it to Peru this year.

I was hoping to, but probably early next year.

Okay.

All right.

How about one last question here that just came in via the web?

A gentleman or a gentlewoman asks about, and just says, please ask Dennis about access

to holographic memory via psilocybin.

Okay.

I mean, I'm guessing that they're sort of making an assumption that when we take psilocybin that

we have access to some sort of, you know, Terrence used to talk about the Dell non-local

spaces and this sort of thing.

I guess maybe is that what you think might be happening?

Well, possibly.

I think that psilocybin and these other things give you access to some kind of an archetypal

constellation of information.

I don't know.

I mean, you might be able to characterize it different ways.

You could call it the holographic memory or, you know, the collective unconscious or the

Akashic records or whatever.

But I think there's little doubt that, you know, there is a tremendous repository of information

that is accessible many ways and most of the time is not accessible.

If it was, you know, we wouldn't be able to navigate in the day-to-day world.

I mean, that's one of the things that these things do.

You know, Huxley's original idea that, you know, somehow mescaline opened what he called

the reducing valve is, I think, a very valid model.

You know, to, I mean, we've discussed this before, I think, on the program, to the extent

that, you know, the brain synthesizes reality and then, you know, we proceed to live in

this confabulation that the brain constructs.

You know, the hallucination that we've all agreed to call consensus reality.

And it has its uses.

It maps close enough to ordinary reality that we can navigate.

But under certain circumstances, it's an impediment because it keeps us from appreciating or apprehending

all of this other information that we normally filter out.

Right.

That's very valuable and pertinent to our own situation.

Well, in its own, when it's apprehended under the right circumstances.

So that's one of the importance of, you know, that's the importance of set and setting, for

example, in taking psychedelics so that you can establish a setting that where you don't

have to worry about basic survival issues.

So then you can just let your defenses down, your ordinary reality mapping, and let it all

flow in.

And what it is, I don't really know.

Holographic memory is as good a way to characterize it as anything, I think.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I have to say thank you.

And it's been wonderful, as always.

Always a pleasure.

Yeah.

Dennis, you do great work.

And we're all appreciative of everything that you do and that you've done.

And please give our best to your family and to Kat and to Clea and Finn, and hopefully

everybody's doing well.

I will do that.

All right.

And we will be in touch next time around, okay?

All right.

All the best.

All the best to you.

Thank you very much, Dennis.

Okay.

Bye.

All right, everybody.

Dr. Dennis McKenna.

Thank you very much, Dennis, a true shaman, if I ever did know one, reluctant or otherwise.

All right.

Okay.

It's Mike.

You're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

And we will play a little piece of music here.

Shift gears a little bit.

Come back.

I'll do some of the normal stuff that we do during the first hour.

And then I've got a little surprise for you, probably in about a half hour or so.

And we'll see what else we come up with for the rest of the program, okay?

All right.

One more time.

Big thank you, Dr. Dennis.

We love you.

And thanks for everything that you do.

All right.

It's Mike.

You're listening to Radio Orbit, KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

This is a song called Rain.

A song called Rain.

Wonderful music from my friend Brendan Angelitas on the web, www.weldersounds.com.

All right.

It's Mike Hagan.

You're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

On the web at kopn.org.

And if you want to find my website and all these wonderful programs that we've been putting

together for you for a little while here, you can do that at www.mikehagan.com, all right?

Okay.

One more time.

Big thank you to Dr. Dennis McKenna.

You can find out information about him pretty easily on the web, and I advise you to do so.

And if you're not familiar with his brother Terrence, the work that he did was quite

amazing as well.

Okay?

All right.

Hello to everybody listening to us this evening on KOPN or over the Internet, live or otherwise.

Every Monday we broadcast the show from the wonderful studios here at KOPN in downtown

Columbia, Missouri.

We stream the show live on the web at kopn.org.

Just click on the Listen Live button.

You'll get a nice 64K stream.

That'll bring the show to you from anywhere on the planet, assuming that we're doing things

right here and you're doing things right with your computers on the other end over there.

All right?

Speaking of the Internet, thank you to my good friend Larry Norger, the web wizard.

Big thanks to Larry for helping out with the website.

Thanks to everybody else out there sending art, music, poetry.

We'll get some new stuff in the Poets Corner soon, and I've got a lot of updates to do on

the website as always, but we'll do that presently.

If you're an artist of any variety, get in touch with me and we'll figure out a way to

share your music, your poetry, your visual art, I guess I should say.

Come here and you can dance and we'll see how that goes over on the radio.

So anything, you know, and we'll try to find a way to share it with other people on the

web as well.

Okay?

If you're interested, check it out.

Go to the website, see what you think, mikehagan.com.

You'll have access to everything that we're doing, and please share your thoughts with us.

It's always, you know, helpful and interesting to see what the people out there who are looking

at the website and listening to the radio show think about what we're doing, what I'm

doing, I guess I should say.

I always say we to make it act like there's more people involved in this than me.

Anyway, there's a forum that's always busy and up and active.

They're on the website.

Just click on the Radio Orbit forum.

Lots of interesting topics that are always talked about, discussed, debated over there,

and really pleased by the life that the forum has taken on of its own.

A big thank you, as usual, to Chaos for getting the whole chat thing together.

It's awesome, and it's wonderful to be able to peek in there during the show for questions

and comments, and just to see who's hanging out there listening to the program.

I always encourage my guests, as well as listeners, to join us there in the chat room

and in the forum, and it's a great way to get to know like-minded or otherwise individuals.

All right?

All right.

My e-mail address, if you want to get in touch with me, orbitradio, O-R-B-I-T-R-A-D-I-O,

orbitradio at AOL.com.

Send e-mail to me.

Send e-mail to our guests.

Send e-mail to the musicians that perform on the program.

You can do that all through the website at MikeHagan.com.

You can connect with most of these folks.

And if you want to give me a call anytime here in the radio studio, you can call 573-874-5676.

Okay?

All right.

Let's talk a little bit about upcoming guests.

We'll take a break at the top of the hour.

We'll come back, do some space weather real fast, and then I've got a special guest that

I'm going to try to get on the horn with us at about quarter after, and I'll tell you

a little bit about him in just a minute here.

But next week, Jay Widener on the 8th of October.

Looking forward to having Jay back on the program.

The week after that, Dr. Bruce Lipton.

Jay, by the way, has a, you know, he's always doing something.

Video projects are his big thing these days, but he recently completed a DVD project that's

a documentary on crop formations, and I had the pleasure to watch it, and it's very interesting,

and we're going to talk with Jay about that new DVD project, among other things, I'm

sure, but next week, Jay Widener on the air again.

He's been on the program a number of times in the past and one of the favorite guests as

far as the audience is concerned, certainly here on the program.

All right.

The following week, Dr. Bruce Lipton, another gentleman doing wonderful work out there in

the sort of combined sciences, putting a lot of interesting ideas together, and in a very

hopeful sense, we'll talk with Bruce Lipton on the 15th of October.

Elizabeth Upton is a woman who's doing some very interesting work down in Peru.

I was introduced to her by John Major Jenkins, and Elizabeth will be on the program very soon.

I forget exactly the date that we agreed upon, sometime in early November, I think, but we've

got a lot of stuff planned for the next couple months throughout the end of the year, and

just a pleasure to be speaking with all these wonderful folks and sharing the conversations

with you all, okay?

I've got some wonderful music also lined up for the next couple months.

My friend, Sherelle C. Limes, a.k.a.

Shannon Diaz, I ran into her the other day on the street, and she's back in town, and Shannon's

one of my favorite local musicians and a real cool girl as well.

Anyway, she's always writing and always doing new stuff, so I'm going to get some new music

from Shannon sometime in the next couple months.

We'll have her on the program and share some of her new tunes with y'all, and lots of other

stuff happening around town and around the country and around the world, as always, so

it's a pleasure to be able to, you know, hear all this stuff and share it with you guys,

all right?

Okay, announcements here.

John Lilly, the wonderful Dr. John Lilly, who was one of the pioneers in the field of

Cetacea Research, one of the guys that, you know, finally got people to take a serious

look at the dolphins and the whales, and an inspiration certainly to many of the people

who have been on this program, including Dr. Dennis McKenna.

I'm certain that Dennis, you know, was influenced by John Lilly, and in fact, I imagine that

they probably knew each other.

I know Terrence and John were familiar with one another.

I don't know if they were friends, but, you know, this was a guy that was very influential

to a lot of the people who I consider heroes, so John Lilly is certainly one of my heroes

as well.

He was the mentor of Dr. Michael Heysen, of course, from the Sirius Institute, Dr. Michael

Heysen, a dolphin researcher who, along with his wonderful partner, Star Newland, have

been doing amazing work in the footsteps of Dr. John Lilly for many, many years, and lots

of other people as well.

So here's to him, Dr. John Lilly died on September 30th, 2001.

Unfortunately, I didn't start doing this program until a couple of years after that.

I would have loved to have John Lilly on the program here.

All right.

One other thing I should say, I want to say congratulations to my friend KMO.

It's the first anniversary of the Sea Realm podcast.

And KMO is a good guy and someone who's doing a great radio show.

And if you haven't checked him out, you can do that on the web at sea-realm.com.

He interviews lots of interesting folks.

And although we don't talk to the same folks for the most part, we do talk to the same types

of folks and cover many of the same topics.

And I sure appreciate the work that he's doing.

So congratulations to KMO, the anniversary of the Sea Realm podcast.

Good work.

And I hope you continue to do the thing as long as you can.

All right.

One other thing.

I've had a number of questions regarding this whole AIDS, HIV, silver business that we

continue to be interested in.

And a lot of people are sending me emails saying, what can we do to help?

And the simple answer is, go to your library.

Those of you who have a library card and at pretty much any library now in the country and

around the world in most cases, there is something that's called WorldCat.

W-O-R-L-D-C-A-T, WorldCat.

And WorldCat is a sharing of information between libraries all over the planet.

And if you go to the WorldCat search that's on the computers in your library, or you can

just go to the desk and one of the librarians will do it for you.

They did it for me at my library here in Missouri, in Columbia.

But go to the library and request a progress report.

You just pick one.

You go in there and find one.

But the way to find it is use WorldCat.

And you have to use some keywords.

And the keywords are special virus cancer program.

If you put those four words, special virus cancer program, in the WorldCat search engine, you'll

get a whole bunch of documents that come up.

Progress report number eight, progress report number nine, et cetera.

There were 15 of these progress reports.

So what I would suggest you do is just go there.

And I think they charge you 50 cents.

So go there and request one of them.

Pick one of those progress reports and request one of them.

And if your library doesn't have it on its own shelf, it will arrange what's called an

interlibrary loan.

And the document will be sent to your library.

And then you can check it out for 30 days or whatever and make copies of it or whatever.

And then you can, number one, convince yourself that this program actually existed.

And then, number two, you can get in touch with your quote-unquote representatives and

tell them to represent you and ask them what they think of this document and tell them that

you'd like to request an investigation and a review of the U.S. special virus cancer program.

That's what you can do to help.

All right?

Okay.

Anyway, it's Mike, you're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

We're just about the top of the hour, so I'm going to play another song here from my friend

Welder.

And then we'll come back and, well, we'll do space weather.

I've got a quick space weather piece that I can go over.

And then I'm going to have another gentleman on the phone, if it works out.

His name is Mitch Schultz.

And Mitch and I have an interesting story how we met.

But he heard an interview I did with Dr. Rick Strassman a couple of years ago.

Rick, of course, is the author of a book that's called DMT, The Spirit Molecule.

And Mitch is a filmmaker who was interested in DMT, dimethyltryptamine.

And he heard my interview with Rick Strassman, sent me a note, and we began to correspond.

And he's making a film that's actually called DMT, The Spirit Molecule.

And I got an email from him a couple of weeks ago, and he told me the film is almost completed.

It'll be out in the spring.

And I thought, well, why don't you come on the air and talk a little bit about it and, you know,

just introduce yourself to the audience.

And then when the film actually comes out, we'll have you back on the air and talk a little bit more greater length.

So in the next 15 minutes or so, we'll have Mitch Schultz, the author, or I guess I should say the director, producer of DMT, The Spirit Molecule,

a documentary about dimethyltryptamine that's due out in the next six months or so.

And Dennis, as a matter of fact, was interviewed for that particular film project along with a number of other people

that I'm sure that you all that listen to my show would be pretty interested in.

So Mitch Schultz in just a few minutes, okay?

All right, in the meantime, let's play another one here from Welder.

This song is called, what do I want to play?

This is a great song.

It's called Find You Here.

It's Mike who listens to Radio Orbit, K-O-P-N, Columbia.

And once again, this is Eskimo or Welder.

In this case, the song that was recorded, he called himself Eskimo.

But sorry, Brendan, I promised that I'd just refer to him as Welder tonight.

But at any rate, it's great music, whatever he calls himself.

This is called Find You Here.

It's Mike who listens to K-O-P-N, Columbia, 89.5 FM, Radio Orbit.

That's Eskimo, a.k.a. Welder, a.k.a. Brendan Angelidis, my friend on the web, www.weldersounds.com.

We'll hear a couple more before the end of the program from Brendan.

All right, it's Mike.

You're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPM Columbia, 89.5 FM.

And let's do space weather here, all right?

Actually, something that I should mention before we actually go into that is that there was this amazing event

that happened on Friday night that was a big, gigantic meteor.

I actually called it a super meteor, whoever they might be.

But I'll read a little bit about it for you here.

Check this out.

On September 29th, a fireball reported to be 100 times brighter than a full moon streaked over Finland.

Witnesses say the meteor exploded in midair, but it is not yet known if large pieces of the space rock fell to the ground.

Finland's biggest astronomical association, URSA, says that a light phenomenon seen over much of the northern and eastern Finland on Friday

was a meteor, the brightest scene in the country, more than 30 years.

The editor of the organization's journal, Marko Pekola, says it was a super bolide,

a fireball more than 100 times brighter than a full moon.

The fireball was apparently caused by a space rock striking the atmosphere over northern Ostrobothnia

and then exploding over Finland.

URSA says that the rock may have weighed some 200 kilograms.

However, it was not clear on Saturday whether any meteorites fell to the ground.

The dazzling shooting star spurred worried phone calls to emergency centers in various parts of Finnish Lapland

as far apart as Kemi and Kutekio and Ivalo.

Anyway, a major event up there in the skies above Finland.

And the only thing that I'll point out is when people say that the rock may have weighed some 200 kilograms,

they have no idea how much it weighed.

It could have been the size of Venus for all they know.

Anyway, something very interesting happened up there.

And people talking about it on the web and over at Space Weather and on the forum over there at MikeHagan.com.

All right, let's see.

There was also something that happened for the first time recently.

It is what they call a cometomagnetic storm.

Astronomers have witnessed a geomagnetic storm that affected a comet.

Now, this is amazing actually because Kent Stedman and I have talked about this and Kent's documented this on his website long before April 2007.

But what happened was a coronal mass ejection was sort of launched out from the sun and hit comet Enki as Enki was moving around the sun.

And at the first look of this, they actually have a video put together from NASA.

It looks like the CME actually rips the comet's tail off.

But it's a magnetic thing that's probably happening, an electromagnetic thing.

The same thing that sparks Aurora Borealis here on Earth, the energy of these CMEs will affect the magnetic field of a comet.

And it had a very interesting effect on this comet.

And I think it's very, very compelling evidence to consider the work of the people that are talking about the ideas of a plasma-based electric universe,

electric galaxy certainly, electric solar system.

And the fact that all of these bodies that move around the sun and that, you know, revolve around their centers in the galaxy,

all of them are electromagnetic bodies and they all share an electromagnetic connection.

And so a comet isn't just an icy rock that's flying by.

It actually can have an electromagnetic effect and can be a causative factor as well.

Well, Kent and I have posited that these CMEs that seem to interact with comets are, it's not just a fluke.

It's because of the electromagnetic connection between the two.

And essentially it's a spark that's arcing between, you know, between the two different objects.

But at any rate, NASA is interested in whatever happened when a CME tore the tail off comet Enki back in April 2007.

And I'm sure I mentioned Enki on the air at some point if I was paying attention.

All right.

Another comet has been discovered.

This one is called Loneos.

And it was discovered, oh, I'm not sure exactly when, but over the next month it's predicted to increase in brightness to the fourth magnitude.

And that means it will be visible to the naked eye, sort of barely.

But it should be an easy target for backyard telescopes and binoculars.

There's Comet Loneos, the actual designation that the astronomers give it, is C2007F1.

But it's making its first visit to the inner solar system, at least since we've been watching this sort of stuff.

And on October 29th, right around, well, I think we have a show on that day, actually.

Actually, that's cool, actually.

But right around Halloween, it will get very close to the sun up there in the same, well, about the same distance away as Mercury.

And what happens then is anybody's guess, you know.

Sometimes new comets do interesting things, and we'll just have to keep our eyes on it.

That's going to be an interesting one, though, for sure.

So, all right, that's what's happening up there in space weather.

Let me look at the calendar here, see if there's anything that I should mention that's of note.

Of course, we have the usual asteroid and comet flybys, Canadian Space Agency Science Data Workshop.

That's going on this week.

The workshop on next-generation nucleon decay and neutrino detectors.

Wow.

I don't know about that.

Comet 46P, Vertanen, that's getting close here.

Sigma-7 launch.

Hmm, let's see.

Well, the 27th, I took that back on the 4th of October.

That's the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the launch of Sputnik 1, a very, you know, historic and important project and mission that was undertaken by the Soviet Union.

Put a guy up there in a space, or a satellite, I guess.

I don't think that was a manned satellite.

The Sputnik 1 just went up on its own, but it was the first satellite, I think, to actually orbit the planet.

What else do we have going on here?

World Space Week begins October 4th.

Oh, and I guess plenty of other things, but nothing really of note.

So, all right, let's take another short break here.

I'm going to get Mitch Schultz on the line, and we'll talk about his film DMT, The Spirit Molecule, for a few minutes.

And then we'll see what else we can put together for the rest of the show, okay?

All right, everybody, hang in there, and we'll come back in just a few minutes with Mitch Schultz.

You can find information about Mitch on the web at spectralalchemy.com.

And it's just sort of a contact page, but if you want to get in touch with him, that's the way to do it, okay?

All right, in the meantime, let's play another song here from Welder.

This one is called Crosshatches.

It's Mike, you're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia 89.5 FM.

KOPN Columbia 89.5 FM.

All right, that was Crosshatches.

Another great piece of music there by Brendan Angelides on the web.

You can find information about the music you're hearing tonight at www.weldersounds.com.

All right, it's Mike, you're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia 89.5 FM, about 20 minutes after 1 a.m.,

now on the second day of October.

Great to be with you all tonight.

Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the program so far.

I was just thrilled to have Dr. Dennis with us for a couple hours there in the first part of the program.

He's a busy, busy guy with a lot of things going on, and it's a thrill to be able to talk with him

and get him to share some time here on the air with everybody.

So, one more time, thanks to Dennis.

And we will also say hello in a moment to another guest who is named Mitch Schultz.

And Mitch is a documentary film producer, I guess.

We're going to have him tell us exactly what he does,

but I know certainly that he's making a film that's called DMT, The Spirit Molecule.

And, of course, that's something that interests me and lots of the other people who listen to this program.

And I think we're just going to say hello and let Mitch tell us a little bit about himself.

Welcome to the program. Mitch Schultz, hi.

Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. Thanks for coming on this late at night.

You bet. Not a problem at all.

So, yeah, so very excited about the documentary.

We're moving forward pretty quick.

And I guess if I could just start and tell a story about how I kind of got hooked up with the whole thing was through you, actually.

Yeah, well, tell me, before we do that real quickly, tell us a little bit about yourself.

You know, the fact that people even, if somebody says DMT to me or psilocybin or anything like that,

I usually say, okay, I want to know a little bit more about you because we seem to be sort of a tightly knit group anyway.

And the way that we get to the place we get is usually interesting.

So how did you get interested to begin with in this stuff?

Well, and that's part of the whole story, actually, Mike.

It's back in New York.

It was probably about five years ago now.

And a friend of mine had some DMT.

And this was my first experience with it.

Wow.

Something that I just had never heard anything about.

So it kind of caught me off guard.

I bet.

Yeah, exactly.

But it was a very amazing experience and life-changing in a lot of ways.

And that whole moment just kind of spurred my interest.

And I said, I have to know more.

So just doing some research and obviously came across Dr. Strassman's book.

Right.

That's kind of what pushed it over the edge.

And I thought, I think the world kind of needs to know something about this.

Right.

Yeah, when I read Rick Strassman's book, I was blown away, too.

When I started doing my radio show, I made a list of, I think, ten people that were sort of my top ten people

that I thought, okay, if I can get interviews with these ten folks, then I'll consider myself, you know, good.

And I actually did what I wanted to do.

And I have since actually done that.

But he was on the top ten.

And he's a very interesting guy.

And that book is, I think, will probably be remembered as a pretty important book eventually.

I think so, too.

And, you know, it's been a pleasure to kind of partner up with Rick on this project.

And I wanted to bring him on, not just to kind of say, okay, Rick, I want to look at your research and take it and make a movie out of it.

But I had to have him on board, you know, for obvious reasons.

And he's been instrumental in helping us put the whole cast of characters together and just kind of be in there.

He knows.

He knows what at least he's done in a lot of the research.

And I think that's going to help push the project along and make it that much better, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

He's great.

And how remarkable the web is.

I mean, it's so cool.

Like you say, you and I wouldn't be in touch with one another were it not for the fact that we were able to.

You were able to do a little work on him, came across the show here.

And next thing you know, we're chatting about it.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, it was kind of a cool experience.

And I appreciate you sending that disc along.

That's what kind of started this whole thing.

So thank you.

Yeah, no problem at all.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the film and what your objective is with it

and who's in it and where you've gone to film it and all this sort of thing.

Well, we started this last January.

We started out in New Mexico where Dr. Strassman is and where the whole research took place.

We went there.

We shot about eight of the volunteers from the study and several other people.

We had Stephen Barker from LSU.

And then Dave Nichols was there.

Rick was there, of course.

From there, we went out to Berkeley and we shot some interviews out there.

Dennis, who you had on early.

We interviewed Dennis and a lot of other people out there as well.

And then our last stop is going to be out in New York.

And then by the time it's all said and done, we'll have about 50 interviews done.

Wow.

Speaking about trying to get those top ten interviews,

I just feel blessed to go out and talk to the 50 people that we're going to have on board on this thing.

So it's kind of like who we don't have on board.

It's been great.

Yeah, it's quite a collection that you guys have for the film for sure.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, did you go to Peru as well or were you planning on going there?

We're planning on going to Peru.

And it looks probably right after the first of the year is our goal to get out to Peru.

And I think Dennis McKenna will be joining us down there as well as Dr. Strassman.

And that's going to be an integral part of this film is the indigenous use

and how long that's been going on and how ingrained in the culture and society it is

and how that's kind of started to translate and come up in our culture here in America

and in the Western world in general.

Right, right.

Very interesting.

So that's going to be an integral part of the film for sure.

So you've been speaking with people who are experiencers as well as scientists

and all people that are involved in researching the substance?

Exactly, exactly.

And we're going to be looking at artists and their visionary arts,

trying to look at a lot of different realms that I think kind of tie back into DMT in some weird way.

And I'm not going out trying to find any answers.

I think I'm just going to throw as much out there as I can and let the audience kind of decide what this might all mean.

Right, right.

I just think there's too much out there for any one person to chew on or one film to even, you know,

to kind of even make a dent in the whole thing.

So it's just kind of a starting point, I think, more than anything.

Well, I think it's great because, and you're right, I mean, I think that in the,

I hesitate to say in the West, but it's basically what it is.

It's basically in the whole planet right now.

Exactly.

But, you know, we're just now, us, quote, unquote, educated people are just now getting educated, you know.

Yeah.

And so there is a whole lot that we don't know,

and we're just starting to scratch the surface of these things.

And so I'm glad that you're really not trying to draw any particular conclusions,

just putting stuff out there and saying, well, look at this, check this out, you know.

So it's going to be a kind of a strange introduction, I think, to a lot of people.

But I think the time is right.

I think there is some, you're saying kind of around the world right now,

there is somewhat of this awakening, at least I'm sensing anyways for myself,

that people are starting to be a little more aware of this and a little more open to it.

I think you're right.

I sense that as well.

And I talk to lots of different people that, in a general sense, I think seem to feel the same way.

Something's going on.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, and it's interesting that, you know, if you take DMT or if you take psilocybin,

you know, and Rick did a, he did a psilocybin study too.

Nobody talks too much about that.

But he did a psilocybin study as well that I'm sure is very interesting to talk with him about.

But at any rate, these substances sort of intimate something like this,

that something's going on and they're there to sort of midwife us through the whole thing.

Yes, and it's, you know, they're not something to really mess with.

I think sometimes they, they can be a dangerous thing at times if they're not,

if they're not respected and we need to be careful with what they are.

That's why I think more research needs to be done.

And they can be very powerful tools at the same time.

Yeah, I think that's a fair statement.

I mean, like any, like any powerful tool, you better be careful how you use it.

You know, I don't care if it's a table saw, you know, or a, or a small, you know, neurotransmitter.

So I think that table saw could be a good analogy actually.

Yeah, it'll tear you apart, you know.

Exactly.

But in the right set, the right setting with the right head on, you know,

and the right situation, it can be very beneficial as well.

Absolutely.

And that's, and that's the other main thing, it's a set and setting, and it's, you know,

cured over and over again, but it, it is the most important.

Right, it really is.

I mean, that's where, that's what it all comes down to essentially.

So, all right, well, um, is, is it going to be a full length documentary?

Is it going to be an hour long, half hour long?

What's it going to be?

Well, we're shooting for 90 minutes, 90 to 100 minutes.

Okay.

So a teacher length doc, and we are definitely hoping for the actual release.

Awesome.

And that's what we're going to be pushing for.

We want to get to a, to a wide audience, but, but again, in a respectful way.

All right, uh, film festivals and this sort of thing, probably.

Yes.

The first thing we're going to shoot for is, uh, is going for Cannes, and that's what we're

going to shoot for first.

And, uh, beyond that, we'll just go look for Sundance for the next, for the next jump.

Okay.

Well, let me give you, let me give you another, uh, uh, proposition maybe.

Please do.

There's a film festival here in Columbia, Missouri, which is actually a quite big deal in the Midwest.

It's called the True False Film Festival.

Okay.

And, uh, it's a, it's a four or five day deal.

And, and this last year, I mean, it was very, very well attended and, uh, lots of sort of

big time people were here.

And, uh, that's one that you should definitely look into.

There's, uh, there's a real good gang of people that are behind it here.

And they're, uh, they really made some waves over the last couple of years.

So look.

When is that, Mike?

Oh, I think, I think it's, uh, don't quote me, but I think it's June, something like that.

All right.

I'm hoping if, if you said, uh, March or so that you're hoping to have it done, uh, the,

the finished product, maybe you can still get an entry into that one.

I'll bet you could, so.

Okay.

I'll definitely look into that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

True False Film Festival.

That's a, that's a great one.

But at any rate, I'd, I'd love to see it, uh, uh, at any and all of these festivals.

And I, and I, and I hope that it, uh, I hope it gets the, uh, you know, I hope it gets the eyes that it deserves and people can, can make a, make an assessment of it, you know?

Well, I appreciate it.

And we're definitely going to push and hard to get this thing out to everybody and, uh, you know, shows like this just going to help.

So thank you for doing that.

Sure.

Who, who else is involved in the project with you?

Um, as far as.

Like in the, are you, are you doing the production direction, all that stuff yourself?

We, I am.

I have a couple of other people on board.

Um, I've got the gentleman named Justin Coresby, uh, guy named Craig Gernsway, gentleman named Chris Olson.

We're all based out of Texas.

We, we all grew up here and I recently got back from New York and, uh, I wanted to come back here to, to make this film.

So, uh, you know, I know you're from Austin and it's, you know, it's funny how these threads move, but, you know, Terrence McKenna, who was Dennis's brother, of course, used to talk at, uh, well, he did a thing a couple of times at the whole life festival.

I think they called it down there, but he'd talk at UT often enough and was pretty familiar with the, with the, uh, the scene down there in Austin.

And it's a great vibe down here.

It's the only place in Texas.

Yeah.

I love it here.

I love it.

And I love it.

So it's a great place.

Yeah.

Austin's a great town.

No question about it.

Very similar actually to Columbia, Missouri, believe it or not.

I'll have to come check that out.

I've never been.

Yeah.

They're both sort of, uh, sort of oasis in the desert of sorts, you know?

Anyway.

Okay.

Well, um, is this your first film project or have you done more before this?

And are you, I, I've never directed my own.

So this is my first feature to direct.

I've worked in a lot of different independent productions and TV stuff, but, uh, this is my first, my first baby.

So I feel, yeah, I just feel lucky to have this is my first project to direct.

So it's, uh, kind of a, an amazing thing.

Well, I'm looking really forward to, uh, to, to seeing it when you, when, when you guys get it completed.

I'm really looking forward to it.

So what else, uh, what do you got on, uh, on, on the future plans?

You're going to, you're going to do a follow-up.

You're going to do another documentary.

You got anything else you'd like to, uh, talk about?

I'm going to do a Tesla, a Nikola Tesla documentary.

Yeah, I don't know if you were listening earlier, but Dennis was talking about Nikola Tesla a little bit.

I, I missed it.

Well, see, there you go.

There's other tie-ins again.

Yeah, we, uh, yeah, he, he actually referenced Nikola Tesla and we talked about him for a couple of minutes on the, on the show tonight.

So, and he's one of my heroes, uh, certainly.

Yeah, one of mine as well.

Yeah, that's why he'd be an interesting documentary.

Wow, wonderful.

I look forward to that one too, so.

Well, there's plenty of them.

Yeah, let's hit, uh, one thing at a time though, right?

Yeah, exactly.

All right, man.

Well, look, I'll, uh, let you go.

It's 2.30 in the morning there and, uh, oh, actually, you're, you're in Texas.

You're not in New York, but, uh, at any rate, it's 1.30 like it is here.

So, uh, we'll let you get, uh, onto whatever it is you do at this time of the night.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on, Mike.

You're welcome.

Now, contact information at, what is it?

SpectralAlchemy.com, right?

SpectralAlchemy.com.

We are also, if they want to go to, uh, thespiritmolecule.com slash DMT, uh, that site has just gone up and it'll be a little bit better sense of what the film's all about and who all is involved.

Okay, one more time.

It's thespiritmolecule.com slash DMT.

thespiritmolecule.com slash DMT.

Okay, okay, thespiritmolecule.com slash DMT.

And that's going to be a site for the actual film itself.

For the film itself.

You got it.

All right, cool.

All right, well, I look forward.

I'll go check that out myself and I'm sure you'll get that thing, uh, uh, up to speed as you get the movie, uh, more and more close to completion.

Absolutely, and I'll keep you posted on everything.

Thanks again, Mike.

Very good.

Take care of yourself, Mitch, all right?

Take care.

Okay, everybody, that's Mitch Schultz.

And Mitch is the director, producer of a film that is soon to be released

called DMT, The Spirit Molecule.

And a lot of wonderful people involved in that project,

including Dr. Dennis McKenna, who we shared some time with earlier tonight.

So on the web one more time, thespiritmolecule.com slash DMT.

And if you want to get in touch with Mitch, you can also do that at spectralalchemy.com

or you can send me an email or whatever, okay?

All right, that's going to be one to look forward to.

I really look forward to it.

So we'll talk to Mitch again, maybe toward the release date or afterwards.

Maybe that's it.

After it's released, we'll get a look at it and then talk to Mitch again about the film

and wish him the best of luck with regard to all these festivals

and getting some exposure for the film.

All right, it's Mike.

You're listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

And I'm going to take a break here and play a song by Welder called Sumeria.

It's about six minutes or so, so I get a nice long breather here.

We'll come back, talk about a couple things in the news,

and wrap things up in the next 20, 25 minutes, okay?

All right, it's Mike.

You've been listening to Radio Orbit, and you are continuing to do so, hopefully.

It's about 1.35 in the a.m. now on the 2nd of October, 2007.

It's been a pleasure to be with you all tonight.

I've enjoyed talking with Dr. Dennis McKenna for the first couple hours,

and thanks to him and Mitch Schultz for both spending some time with us tonight.

Sounds like some interesting stuff going to be coming from both of these gentlemen, right?

Okay, once again, this is Welder, and the song is called Sumeria.

It's Mike.

You've been listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN Columbia, 89.5 FM.

Sumeria, a song from Welder.

We've been listening to music from Welder throughout the program tonight.

His name is Brendan Angelitas.

Creates a bunch of different kinds of music and releases them under different titles.

And we've been listening to Welder tonight on the web at www.weldersounds.com.

That one's called Sumeria.

We'll hear maybe one more at the end of the show here, okay?

All right, it's about 1.45 on the 2nd of October.

We've got about 15 minutes or so left for the program tonight.

And it's been a fun one.

Thanks to everybody out there for hanging around, listening to the program.

And we will wrap things up here.

And I'm looking in the news to see if there's anything that I want to talk about.

On Kent Stedman's website over there at cyberspaceorbit.com, always things worth checking out.

Kent's been concerned about the economy a little bit as of late, with good reason.

Of course, the bankers and those types are always trying to get in your back pocket one way or another.

So nothing really new there, but certainly something to pay attention to and try to protect yourself as best you can in the midst of, you know, the robber barons trying to do some more robbing.

And alternative energies, certainly something that we need to be more and more interested and involved with.

Like most things, as Dennis was saying tonight and as we always say, you know, don't expect it to come from the powers that be.

Don't expect your alternative energy to come from some corporation.

Expect it to come from your basement.

Expect it to come from your garage.

Figure it out.

Don't find other people that are figuring it out.

And just do it for yourself and for your friends.

There are people that are burning salt water, for God's sake.

All right.

The U.S. dollar.

Yeah, in deep trouble.

Okay.

What else have you got to say here, Kent?

Thank you for the plug for the show tonight, as always, Bardo.

I love you.

And, well, yeah, big volcano eruption off the coast of Yemen.

As always, interesting things happening all around the planet.

So, anyway, okay.

In the chat, there's a few people that are sticking around there.

Ian and Wee Willie and Sushi, MacPro, Tanner.

Hello to everybody over there, SVM or MDS, whichever you are.

Sushi, hello.

I said, anybody got anything to talk about?

And Ian said, love.

And then somebody else said, tell me what's happening over there, Mike.

You know, things that are happening in your life.

And let's hear about you.

So, anyway, so I'll talk a little bit about me and what's happening in my life.

And I'll try to include love in the talk.

All right.

So, well, I don't know.

I love my life.

That's for sure.

Good place to start.

I'm a lucky person who is fortunate enough to have the time and the resources to do the stuff that I do, including this radio program.

You know, 90% of the world, at least, can't even take care of themselves or their own family,

much less, you know, have the time to, you know, waltz down to a radio station for free and do fringe radio, you know, throughout the wee hours of the night.

But, anyway, so, yeah, I love my life.

And I feel, you know, blessed and fortunate to be able to be in the situation that I am to do the things that I'm able to do.

Of course, it's nothing without the people that are around you and the plants, you know, and the animals.

I recognize the whole thing, the fish and the creepy crawlers.

You know, I was thinking about Luther Burbank.

Dennis and I spoke briefly about him earlier in the program tonight.

And he really was remarkable.

And one of the things we really didn't touch on was how Luther Burbank did what he did.

And what he did was remarkable.

You know, people would go to him and say, okay, we need a plant that will, you know, do this.

We need a potato that can survive in these climatic conditions and this type of sun and this sort of soil or whatever.

And Luther Burbank was within, always within, you know, two or three years max, be able to say, okay, here you go, here it is.

And nobody really knew how he was doing it.

But I suspect I know how he did it, believe it or not.

And I don't think that it's as much to do with breeding as everybody thinks.

And this is just my take on the whole thing.

But my experience, my evolving and continuing experience with my own plants is one of the building of relationship in a true sense,

just like we think of a relationship between ourselves and, you know, our significant other or our children or our friends.

But the relationship can be one of love, just like it can be one of greed or, you know, manipulation.

In other words, most of the plants on the planet are used by human beings, you know.

They're just used.

They're essentially, you know, not really recognized for the most part for, you know, anything that they might be in and of themselves.

They're simply grown, harvested, and eaten so that people can survive or animals, you know.

We feed them to our cows or whatever.

So we have to force them to do the things that we want.

We have to breed them.

We have to hybridize them.

We have to genetically manipulate them in order to get them, you know, to exhibit the characteristics that we might want in them.

So we do it in the scientific laboratory these days.

We do it with genetic manipulation and all this other stuff, hybridization.

But like with all things, you know, there's usually more than one way.

And a guy like Luther Burbank didn't have the benefits of, you know, genetic science.

And he did this long before any of this stuff was around.

And so he did it in another fashion.

And people have always assumed that, you know, he was just breeding.

Well, I mean, nobody really knows what he was doing.

It's like Tesla.

Nobody knew what the hell he was doing.

But yet the results were there.

So anyway, my intuition is that he loved his plants.

And he had a relationship with them that was one of objective communication.

And as silly as that may sound to many people, I personally have experienced this sort of thing and I'm certain that it's possible to have objective communication with a plant.

And through that communication, through that relationship, essentially, all you have to do is convince the plant to do what you want it to do.

So ask it, plead with it, try to learn with it, try to teach it what you're trying to do.

And if your relationship is solid enough, if your ability to communicate is solid enough, if the plant is in agreement with you that it's a decent thing to do, well, then the plant will do it.

And I think this is a highly, highly relevant reality, actually.

And I'm not interested in whether science is interested in it.

You know, I don't care whether people can prove it or not.

The way to prove it is just to do it, is to just show people, here it is.

You know, look at this plant.

Look what it can do.

So, this is one of the things that I actually embark upon in my own world.

When I grow my plants, when I grow my mushrooms, I work very hard to partner with them, to improve my relationship with them, to improve my ability to objectively communicate with them,

and then to try to get them to agree with me, and then try to do something together.

And I believe this is what Luther Burbank did.

And it begins with love.

You know, it begins with love, just like all of our relationships do.

Or, maybe I should say, all of our relationships should begin with that.

You know, that's the place to begin relationships.

And I'm a person who has many loving relationships.

You know, I love my plants.

I love the trees that grow on the land where I live, and that I share the land with.

And all the critters that live there in the trees and around the land.

And all the spiders and all the creepy crawlers that people step on and try to kill.

You know, I love them all.

And if you come to my place, you don't kill them.

If you do, and I see you, you leave.

You don't kill things there.

And I love my family.

I love my wife, Ashley.

And I love my children, Alistair and Lucas.

And I love all of my friends.

And I love a girl named Debbie in Chicago.

And I love the people at the radio station here that make this all possible

and that work so hard to keep this place on the air.

And, you know, putting out this signal 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 35 years now

with very, very, very little help.

I love these people around here.

And I love all the people that listen to the radio show and make it worthwhile.

And I don't know.

I love the fact that I have a job, you know, that allows me to do this

where I can, you know, support my family and keep food on the table

and keep my life in a reasonable enough situation

that I have time to learn about all the things that I get to share with you guys and girls.

I don't know.

I love it all.

All right?

And I love you all for asking me.

All right, it's Mike.

You've been listening to Radio Orbit on KOPN, Columbia 89.5 FM.

We're going to sneak out of here with one more from my good friend Brendan Angelitas, a.k.a. Welder.

It's called The Heart.

It's a good way to finish things off.

And we'll come on back next week with Jay Widener.

Looking really forward to having Jay back on the air.

And in the meantime, I hope you all have a great week.

Thanks for listening to the program.

Come on back and listen to KOPN anytime.

You know, you can reach us on the web here at kopn.org.

And there's a lot of great programs on the air here, lots of different times during the week.

I encourage you all to check out the station sometime other than just Monday night perhaps.

At any rate, I hope you all have a wonderful week.

And I do love y'all.

And I thank you for listening to the program and for being cool people.

All right?

One more time, this is Welder.

The song is called The Heart.

My name is Mike Hagan.

Radio Orbit, KOPN, Columbia 89.5 FM.

Have a great week.

Take care of yourselves.

Have a great week.