May 12, 2021 • 34 mins
The dangers of Datura revealed, and a different perspective on what it means to seek… and the cost for those of us who do.
Support India during the pandemic by donating to the organizations listed below that were suggested by Astray producer, Ankita Anand.
- https://fundraisers.giveindia.org/projects/wastepickers-of-pune-call-for-support-in-the-devastating-times-of-covid19
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/covid-aid-for-ranchi-india?member=10472615&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer
- https://www.donatekart.com/Hemkunt-Foundation/Give-Oxygen-Cylinders/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvr6EBhDOARIsAPpqUPHbqctClydjRkIjvTnCA8ms7DZvq2OSxSDLBgq2VBFCLJcnxq0A9J8aAli1EALw_wcB
- https://www.khalsaaid.org/donate
Guest Experts:
Suzy Singh ~ Therapist, author and international speaker on karma and consciousness
Alberto Roman ~ Shaman // Contemporary Curandero
Astray Production Team:
School of Humans // iHeartRadio
Caroline Slaughter ~ Host, Writer, Producer
Ankita Anand ~ Producer
Gabbie Watts ~ Supervising Producer
Tunewelders - Sound Production
Jason Shannon ~ Composer
Harper Harris ~ Sound Design, Audio Mixer
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. I want to recognize the devastation that
India is facing with the pandemic. As a country that
has given Astray so much, we're giving back to organizations
assisting Indian civilians right now. My co producer in Kita
Nand has suggested a few organizations that we've listed in
the show notes. Last episode we followed Charlie Marinelli's trip
(00:33):
to the Edge of Enlightenment in India, and that was
supposed to be the end of Astray until Charlie told
me about Datah, a psychoactive nightshade which he thinks might
have led to a psychosis. But he only suspects this
because he witnessed what he believes were the dangerous effects
of data firsthand. It was scary to see her like that.
(00:57):
I mean, I was like, what the hell, what is
going on here? Charlie is commenting on the American woman
in psychosis who he helped, a story we covered in
episode eight, but we're bringing it up again because of
a possible connection to to Torah. It was August twenty nineteen,
a month into a stay in India, when he ran
(01:17):
into this woman at a cafe. I could tell immediately
that something was off, and I had the manager come
over to me. He was like, hey, we got this
American woman. She won't leave, like she's just kind of
sought refuge in this cafe. She keeps her questing like
the music to be turned down, and you know, she
(01:39):
was freaked out and she was kind of like looking
for a safe, quiet space, which the cafe is not.
She was reacting to the music and chatter of the
cafe and was visibly disturbed when anyone approached her. To Charlie,
she seemed paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe or
was too scared too. She had a blank stare in
(02:00):
her face. I mean, like I said, I don't even
know her name. To Charlie mentioned this woman in episode eight.
I asked him to track her down for an interview,
but like he says, she couldn't tell me her name.
And when I first talked to her, I went over
and she wasn't really talking. I just asked her as like,
can I sit down. She's kind of like nodded, and
(02:23):
I sat down next to her and I just started,
you know, talking, Hey, I'm you know, I'm from America too,
and you know what's going on? And there wasn't much
information that she was giving me. It was just kind
of like, I mean, the lights were on, no one
was home at the time. Charlie was hanging out with
(02:44):
an Austrian guy who'd been living in India for eight years.
He had traveled from Austria to India with a terminal
cancer diagnosis. Healed himself there and with his passport expired,
he just stayed one of the many who followed the
grid in India. And I trusted the guy who was
very intelligent, knew something about everything type guy just had information,
(03:08):
just a lot of information. He said, he's like, it
looks like Totra. The Austrian automatically identified this woman's erratic
behavior as a reaction to the poisonous and psychoactive nightshade
to Torah, and he gave me the whole rundown about
like the Yogis will give it to people that that
aren't going far enough in their opinion, what does that mean?
(03:33):
They're they're not having as as deep of a spiritual
experience as they hope. They're not going inwards enough. They're
not they're not making progress in their opinion, They're not
making it to the next level, and so the satura
will be used to take these people to the next level.
(03:54):
Precisely the way that I understand it is it's used
as like how I would use psilocybin to get to
another level, but it's a much more intense psychedelic and
is used without people's knowling because it can just be
slipped in food tea as well. Charlie managed to get
(04:18):
some information out of the woman. She had traveled from
Hawaii to India to attend two back to back silent
yoga retreats and was participating in a dry fast during
the second, which might have set her off. But according
to the Austrian, what was going on with this woman
didn't look like a response to her conditions or lack
of sustenance. Her behavior looked like the effects of something
(04:40):
far more dangerous and deadly. Data The nightshade this woman
was allegedly altered by as a trumpet shaped flower that
blooms in a variety of colors. It can be pure white, purple,
a golden yellow. It blossoms in a shrub found in
ornamental gardens or growing wild along roadsides in India, and
(05:04):
because it's common there, it can result in accidental exposure,
though there aren't times its potent toxin is used intentionally.
The entire plant is poisonous from the roots to the seeds,
though according to an article in the National Library of Medicine,
the most concentrated levels of tropain alkaloids are found in
the flowers, blooms, and seeds. These tropain alkaloid properties include hyociamine, atropine,
(05:31):
and scopolamine, which when used separately with an awareness of dosage,
can help aid anything from digestive issues to motion sickness,
to Parkinson's to heart problems. But when these three are
combined in a toxic trio, they're deadly and can easily
lead to psychosis. When I was looking for stories about
(05:51):
people who have been dangerously affected by tetaura, I found
one reported in Vice about a man in Romania who,
after consuming detaura seeds, fell into a deep sleep, but
when he woke, he didn't know if he was awake
or in a knight. He experienced terrifying hallucinations of monsters
chasing him, and like Charlie, he didn't see things as
(06:13):
they were. At one point during his episode, he was
desperately trying to find his girlfriend and what he thought
were train cars but were actually bushes. Eventually he found
out that he'd been drugged by some guys who had
robbed him. They took everything but left him in a
psychotic state. He barely survived. As he said in the article,
under the influence of tatora, you can't really tell whether
(06:36):
or not you're awake and could easily jump in front
of a truck. Tatora can be ingested, smoked, or absorbed
topically and something like a lotion, and it can be
used against others without their knowledge, which is something Charlie
pointed out earlier from what he had heard from the
Austrian Tatora's used on yoga or meditation retreats to get
(06:58):
people to go deeper, further and hit this edge of
enlightenment that, as we've heard, is psychosis. Though I couldn't
find someone to talk to in the yoga meditation world
with experience around datra, I did speak to a shaman
from Costa Rica or a contemporary corndero, which is what
Alberto Roman prefers to be called. Alberto is very aware
(07:22):
of the potential dangers of data and ayahuasca circles. Ayahuasca
is considered the vine of the soul, in some cases
the vine of the dead. So most people who drink it,
one of the experiences that they will consistently share is
a connection communion with something beyond their ordinary awareness that
(07:45):
is fulfilling. Deep. Ayahuasca is an Amazonian brew that originated
among indigenous communities in South America. As a courandero, Alberto
leads people through these ayouasca ceremonies. So when I do
a ceremony, I treat everyone there as if they are
shamans themselves, because typically in the old days, you know,
(08:08):
there was a woman or somebody who would drum and
chant and dance and receive some sort of information about
what's happening in the habitat, or they would drink a
potion and from their dispense wisdom. But now everybody wants
to drink. So when I bring people into my circle,
I tell them they're self shamanizing, not only for themselves,
(08:30):
but for the group. So there's a level of accountability
and responsibility that they have to also meet me at.
But not all courandero or sammons have a moral compass
like Alberto. That's when the torah comes into play. There
has been a lot of controversy among people in this
(08:52):
horizon around the use of datura because at certain doses
it can have benefits, dosage and intension like anything else.
Courandets and are not gurus. These are people also in
a process of understanding who they are. They can be
seduced by the money, by the power, by the status
(09:14):
that's being brought to them by different cultures. And so
when you mix ayahuasca, which is really you know, two
main ingredients of the ayahuasca line and the chatuna leaves,
then you have the traditional Ayahuaska experience. Not some people,
when they add the tuda, they open up a space
where where the participants is a little bit more suggestible
(09:35):
to the influence of puddos or pandas who who might
have either good intentions. I think that the tuda will
will accelerate a process or might use it to suggest
to a woman to have sex or to you know,
bring more money to themselves. We've always had that in
any tradition, you know, there's always there's always people that
(09:58):
appropriate the lineage for their own their own gains. So
it's not only a problem or a challenge within our communities.
It happens in zen you know, you know the West
Coast is always full of scandals with the zen Masters
that all of a sudden have not dealt with the
with their shadow of sexuality and intimacy and get all
the boundaries confused. So data it can be very, very dangerous.
(10:22):
So you know it's all about dosage. But there's enough
of a discussion in the community around it that's proven
that there's too many people that are have walked into
the tradition without really spending the requisite amount of communion
with these things. You know, could you speak to like
more of the effects of data when it's used or
(10:42):
when it's odd, it's so horrific, so you just kind
of go into this dark space. Sometimes you're you're talking
about larger doses and you're you're in mobile. Immobile is
how Charlie described the American woman at the cafe. He
said she was paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe,
which is what as soporific like data will do. You
(11:04):
can have beautiful visions and you're also more suggestible, so
when somebody tells you something or feeds you something information,
you're less likely to challenge. This makes me think of
Babbage's influence over Charlie. Like it was stated last episode,
he was a puppet on a string. So the torah,
(11:24):
like any mind altering drug, can be used as a
form of control and an abuse of power, which is
a dynamic that can easily come into play between a
student and teacher or a follower, and they're a leader.
Powers the capacity to affect and be affected. There's a
positive side to power, which affirms liberates as active, and
(11:47):
there's a negative side to power, which typically hinders, hampers,
and restricts. So I think the boucles, the dark magicians
what they're doing. Ultimately we use that example of power.
They're restricting your capacity to be free, to live, to
be liberated, to be active, to activate all all your potential.
(12:08):
They're keeping that within a certain a certain range for
their benefit. Tatora is not only abused in some spiritual ceremonies.
In an article published by Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, it's
been called roadside poison when it's baked into a cookie
or another digestible and offered to unsuspecting devotees attending Hindu
(12:30):
festivals like Ali and Shivaratri. The effects of the Tatorah
forces people into a suggestible state, which has in some
cases resulted in their being robbed or sexually assaulted. Is
tata as common a threaten India as it seems, I
asked in Kita about this. I have heard of the plant.
(12:50):
I've also seen it very commonly growing in the wild.
Whenever I see at my first thought is this is
a plant which is supposed to be a favorite with
Lord Shiva. I regularly see it being offered in Shiva temples,
and the second thought, this is poison. According to Hindu
religious text, tatorah is believed who have emerged from Lord
(13:13):
Shiva's chest after he drank the deadly poison Hallao. This
makes sense saying that Shiva is the god of death
and destruction because Tatora is associated with Shiva. The plant
has regularly offered, but not consumed, at Shiva Ratri, the
annual festival honoring Shiva. Now, people drinking bang or what
(13:35):
you call bang over there to get a high is
very common, But I do not know of anyone personally
who has ingested datura, maybe because of how deadly it
can get. I was talking to someone who has spent
a lot of a life in villages, and she said
that some people who like to stay high twenty four
seven would use a couple of tatura seeds along with
(13:57):
whatever else they're taking for their high. But it is
clearly not something people are as casual with as they
are with some their natural intoxicans like bang or bang.
Do you know anything about a toora being used in
these Hindu festivals? Again, no, it's bang or bang that
is used in holy but I have not personally seen
(14:21):
being used in festivals. I actually read last year this
newspaper report that said that around three people in a
family got really sick because they put the tura seats
in their shoes and they drank it because someone had
told them it can cure them of COVID And they
got really ill after it, and they were rushed to
(14:43):
a hospital and thankfully they were saved. But this is
how we hear of the tura when someone tries to
bring it into their daily life. I mean, as a child,
it was grilled into me that you will see this
plant around and just know that this is poison. So
when you listen to Charlie's story with Baba Ge, do
you think that it could be possible that he would
(15:04):
have been drugged with tatorah. From his account, he did
seem drugged, not in his usual state. Now, I can't
say if it was the tourah that was being used
to have some kind of hold over him. Only a
medical expert can qualify that. But if there is someone
who has been using plants pollingestion regularly and knows that
(15:29):
only a certain amount will get deadly and not beyond that,
they could have used it. It's definitely a possibility. This
is known first as something fatal and then as something
that is an intoxicant. So basically, if someone possibly Babaje,
had a knowledge of dosage with tatorah, they could use
(15:51):
the plant as an intoxicant to affect another person whom
they wanted to control, but would have enough awareness of
the plant's potency not to kill them. After the break,
we'll hear with Charley thinks was he drugged by tatorah
or is it something else? Entirely, Charlie Marinelli got something
(16:14):
out of his visit to India. He wasn't prepared for
a psychotic break. He had never been diagnosed with mental
health issues in the past, nor had he taken anything
that wouldn't do such a long episode. But to Torah,
I mean it can last six months. It can never
go away, but it can last six months of psychosis. Charlie,
(16:34):
psychosis lasted two months, not six, but it was two
months too long. Why do you feel like you might
have been slipped to Tora? It just adds up that
Taura makes sense because I mean, even being on heavy
antipsychotics after the fact, I was still in a psychotic
state until I got out of the hospital in Austin,
(16:57):
until I really got that dose of lithium for a week.
Charlie describes this lithium dose as a chemical lobotomy, and
then I started coming out of it, but I was
still so confused up until that point, and just thinking
that I was controlling a whole lot more in my
surroundings than I was. The timeline makes sense. We're wired
(17:21):
as humans to connect a cause to an effect, So
to say that Charlie psychosis was an effect of to
Torah makes his surreal experience makes sense, and knowing this
information could prevent us from falling into the same trap.
But like the other stories we've covered an astray, this
is a gray area. We don't definitively know what triggered
(17:43):
Charlie psychosis, just like we don't know what happened to
Ryan Chambers, who presumably had a reaction to the anti
malarial drug he was prescribed. Or Justin Alexander Schetler, who
allegedly trusted a bad Sadu. Or Jonathan Spalen, whose disappearance
is surrounded by endless possibilities, or Russell whose body was
(18:03):
found but his cause of death remains a mystery. There
is no conclusive cause behind the disappearances of these men,
but there is one thing we know. India syndrome didn't
have anything to do with it. Why isolate India? This
is New Delhi based therapist, author, and international speaker on
(18:24):
karma and consciousness Susie Singh, who I spoke to about
black magic in the last episode as a listener of AUSTRAI.
Singh has insightful thoughts on issues that have been raised
in the podcast, which he shared in an interview within
Keyta and Me. What about the praise for shamanism in
Peru and the Iowa's tourism in South America? There have
(18:44):
been reports of people who died after consuming the hellucygenet
teach a plant. So perhaps the term should be Sika syndrome,
not India syndrome. When Singh redefined India syndrome as seeker syndrome,
it's so clearly articulated what I've been examining the podcast,
(19:07):
what it means to be a seeker and how far
one is willing to take that quest for enlightenment. But
it also shed light on my own compulsion to seek.
As seekers, we look outside ourselves for answers, which can
lead to profound experiences, and as we've witnessed, can also
lead to dangerous ones. But what if the answers we're
(19:29):
seeking aren't outside of us at all? So how do
you advise people to trust themselves more as opposed to
looking outside of themselves for answers. So the first principle
in the search is to know yourself. People think that
they know their mind, but that is one of the
(19:50):
hardest things to do. One needs to start by observing
your thoughts, yourself talk, your constant judgment about people and things,
your beliefs, behaviors, triggers, hot buttons, likes and dislikes, so
mechanisms and fears, and practice with this regularly so that
(20:10):
you can understand what is making you suffer, because what
we are really striving to do is to give up
the suffrag. The second principle is to own responsibility for
finding your own truth, whether it's enlightenment, whether it's healing.
We cannot expect that to be done by a second
(20:33):
or third person. You must make it your own responsibility
to find your troop or to find your healing, because
that's the only way that will motivate you to work
upon yourself. And the third principle is never give your
power away. Learn to question things, and a true teacher
will always take the trouble to explain it to you.
(20:54):
A false teacher will subject you to authority and demand
your trust. Trust, however, even by a teacher, must be earned.
When it's given without truth, What the other is doing
is taking your power away. They are taking away your
power to think, to discern, to say no, to walk away.
To protect yourself, never trust anyone blindly, do your checks
(21:17):
on the person who wish to follow. Always follow and
trust your own intuition because you do have what I
call an inner guide, and that guide awakened you to
your own quest. How can you not listen to your
own inner guide. For women especially, I would say never
(21:37):
meet baba's alone. The funny thing is women know this,
and yet they continue to do it, you know, regardless
of what claims these babas make about healing you. And
this applies for people who are highly respected in society.
It applies to people that your family may no one
trust very deeply. I've had many incidents myself where I
(21:59):
have been asked to sort of meet in private, and
I have always said no. So it's very important that
we do not fall into this trap because we have
to understand there's a whole spin off industry related to
spiritual healing, so we should not walk into any movie
traps yet. Seeing also mentions being weary of taking food
(22:21):
or drink from spiritual teachers, especially if you've just met them,
or being initiated, and to any spiritual practice you don't
have awareness or understanding of when we are really yearning
for enlightenment over some answers of the spiritual response. We
are very suggestible and we get very excited, like little
children in a toy shop when we find someone who
(22:43):
seems to know more than we do, or who promises
us more than we can imagine, but be patient because
nothing is going to accelerate your growth like your own
spiritual practice. So trust in your own practice more than
trusting in some third person to come and make it
(23:06):
happen to you. When Singh was fifteen living in jaiper
a baba appeared outside the gate of her home. He
was wearing a string of holy basil beads around his neck,
which he removed and with no words exchanged, handed a
sing through the bars of the gate. She immediately put
the beads on, and when she looked up, he had vanished.
(23:29):
This exchange activated something and saying, she started hiding in
the quiet of the house's storeroom so she could meditate,
something she'd never done before, but she now knew advanced
meditative techniques after the brief interaction with the unnamed baba.
Because of this, the baba ended up becoming one of
her greatest teachers. In all cases, in mind, I've had
(23:52):
the teachers appear for me, come to me, and I
have always told mine and tees, test your teacher before
you thrust your life innocently into their hands, and never
give you a power of discernment away to another. This
is a mistake a lot of people make where they
will blindly say, let the teacher decide for me what
(24:15):
I should do, and they call it faith. Like Sidhartha says,
your first requirement on the path is the ability to think. Sidhartha,
a character in Hermann has his nineteen twenty two books
by the same name, is on his own spiritual journey
to self discovery, which unfolds in the book, and he
(24:35):
says that on this spiritual path, the number one requirement
is one's ability to think. That is something that they
must never give away, because then you will not see
harm coming, you will not listen to your intuition. A
lot of the times we find that there are people
who are in very authoritative positions in large organizations, and
(24:59):
they're very well presented, and they speak very eloquently. The
greatest guru speak very little, but their words ring with truth.
There is one word these gurus are familiar with, and
we've used it a lot in Astray, and that's enlightenment.
After the break Seeing clarifies this term. But first she
(25:22):
asks a simple question, why are you seeking enlightened? Why
do you want that enlightenment? As a seeker herself saying,
as a firsthand relationship to the quest for enlightenment, and
she survived two near death experiences on this journey, which
enabled her to have an even clearer understanding of what
(25:45):
it all means. Most people seek enlightenment to escape their suffering.
This is one of the key reasons why they fall
victim to false gurus and meet with dangerous consequences. People
want instant hirana. Everything today is I want to know
over the counter kind of just a drug. Just give
(26:06):
me a pill that will make me feel peaceful, that
will make me feel instantly better. But that's addiction. That
is not enlightenment. That is not spirituality. Spirituality is about
doing the work, and it's called work for a reason.
It's called work because it feels like work. The work
(26:27):
is the hard stuff, the issues we avoid that keep
us up at night or have haunted us our entire lives,
throwing us into the same patterns we relive until we're
too damned tired too. Only then are we ready to
do the work, asking for help, going to therapy, joining
recovery group, finding spiritual guidance through a vetted teacher. This
(26:48):
is about sitting with our shadow, the dark stuff we
don't want to look at, but finding awareness and understanding
around it. That's the work from someone who's a practitioner.
Her stuff, i can tell you, is terrifying. It's hard
struggle about struggling against yourself. It's about battling your own
bad habits, your own tendencies, about not getting provoked. It's
(27:13):
about someone insulting me to my face and me wanting
to react sharply and yet trying to hold on to
my center and my piece in that moment when you're triggered.
It's very, very hard to do that. But that is
the practice, and that is the struggle. So it's not
comfortable and beautiful. It's extremely uncomfortable, and like I said,
(27:37):
it's a continuous battle. So what thing is saying is
that enlightenment is not a quick fact, nor is it
a destination. Enlightenment is a gradual process of purifying one's consciousness.
It unfolds through intense in a work, quite like water
coming to a boil, and once the boiling point is reached,
(28:00):
the transformation occurs. A teacher can only guide you, but
the inner work of transforming harmful habits, resisting damaging tendencies,
creation of virtue's building of capacities, intensification of your aspiration,
dissolving the equal mind. All these have to be done
(28:24):
by the seeker himself. So if someone is promising you enlightenment,
we want that, it is deception. In nineteen eighty six,
when I was training under Shishu Rashankar Shui Shri Ravishankar
was one of Thingh's earliest spiritual teachers. He said to me, Susie,
I can open the window and point you to the move,
(28:46):
but I cannot get you there. You will have to
make that journey yourself. So enlightenment is a process and
one the seeker has to be their own guide. For Akita,
would you still consider yourself a seeker after doing a
dry Yeah, definitely, I remain a seeker or even after
(29:06):
doing this podcast. Our hectic life today does not allow
the in build time, space and encouragement for someone to sit, contemplate, introspect, meditate,
or take a mental health break. And that's why seeking
becomes such a thing. Our mental and emotional health needs
get postponed and suppressed to such a point that they
(29:28):
feel the need to drop everything and desperately look for
answers outside. If anything, this podcast has reinforced to me
that seeking, questioning, openness of mind, curiosity, and understanding new
things need to be on our everyday to do list,
not just on our bucket list. As always in Ket's
response is thoughtful answer sinct, but this question wasn't as
(29:52):
easy for me to answer. In reliving Charlie's story with
him and speaking to others who've experienced similar psychotic episodes
in India and other countries, I've observed something about all
of them. These see do not view their psychotic breaks
as being solely harmful or scary. One person I spoke to,
(30:12):
who wanted to remain anonymous, said her psychotic episode didn't
happen to her. It happened for her. It's given her
a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her,
and in doing so, it was empowering. Charlie has said
the same thing. I know this is a skewed way
of viewing an experience that most of us would consider terrifying,
(30:34):
but it makes me think of Plato's allegory of the cave.
In the allegory, prisoners who have been confined to a
cave from birth are chained facing a blank wall. There
is a fire behind them, and when an object passes
in front of the fire, these prisoners classify the object's shadow,
perceiving the shadow as an actual entity, so the shadows
(30:56):
are the prisoner's truth. One of the prisoners is set free.
He's let out of the cave into the sunshine, which
initially blinds him. He slowly adjusts to the light. He's
told the objects around him, trees, birds, people are real,
while the shadows in the cave are an illusion, just
a reflection of the truth. Excited, the freeman returns to
(31:20):
the cave to tell the prisoners about what he's learned.
When he enters the cave, his eyes don't adjust to
the darkness, so he can't see the shadows the prisoners
are still identifying as real. When the freeman tells the
prisoners what he's discovered outside the cave, they're hostile and
resist his trying to free them, so this newly awakened
(31:41):
man leaves the cave free but alone. Plato's allegory shows
that like these prisoners, most people are satisfied staying in
their comfort zone and can be resistant or reject anyone
who points us out, sees things differently, or just wants
to escape. The Cave, Charlie relates to this, I have
(32:03):
to say that probably the biggest cost for me that
I think I'm still struggling with is being discredited by
my family and being kind of treated as I guess
lesser comes to mind treated how people with mental illness
in America are treated. It makes you wonder to such
(32:28):
a deep level of what your reality is to you
and why other people won't accept this reality and go
farther than not accepting it but ostracize cue for it.
Though Charlie's dad, having traveled through India with similar intentions
to Charlie, is more aware of what he's going through,
(32:50):
it's been harder on the rest of his family, who
are understandably concerned about Charlie slipping back into psychosis. But
if we look at the freeman who escapes the Cave
as someone like Charlie who's awakened to a new reality
that others might not understand and or want to understand,
a reality that can be isolating but also liberating, then
(33:12):
I think the answer to the question we've been examining
is the cost of enlightenment may be enlightenment itself, but
I guess that's ultimately a question for you to answer,
and Keita's suggested organizations aiding civilians with the pandemic in
(33:33):
India are listed in the show notes. Thanks for your support.
Astray is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Today's episode of Astray, Seeker Syndrome, was produced, written, and
narrated by Me, Caroline Slaughter and keitaand is my co
producer and Gavi Watts as our supervising producer. Astray was
(33:54):
sound produced by Tune Welders, with score and sound design
by Jason Shannon and mix by Harper Harris. Executive producers
are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Elsie Crawley. Thanks for listening,
(34:33):
School of Humans.
School of Humans. I want to recognize the devastation that
India is facing with the pandemic. As a country that
has given Astray so much, we're giving back to organizations
assisting Indian civilians right now. My co producer in Kita
Nand has suggested a few organizations that we've listed in
the show notes. Last episode we followed Charlie Marinelli's trip
(00:33):
to the Edge of Enlightenment in India, and that was
supposed to be the end of Astray until Charlie told
me about Datah, a psychoactive nightshade which he thinks might
have led to a psychosis. But he only suspects this
because he witnessed what he believes were the dangerous effects
of data firsthand. It was scary to see her like that.
(00:57):
I mean, I was like, what the hell, what is
going on here? Charlie is commenting on the American woman
in psychosis who he helped, a story we covered in
episode eight, but we're bringing it up again because of
a possible connection to to Torah. It was August twenty nineteen,
a month into a stay in India, when he ran
(01:17):
into this woman at a cafe. I could tell immediately
that something was off, and I had the manager come
over to me. He was like, hey, we got this
American woman. She won't leave, like she's just kind of
sought refuge in this cafe. She keeps her questing like
the music to be turned down, and you know, she
(01:39):
was freaked out and she was kind of like looking
for a safe, quiet space, which the cafe is not.
She was reacting to the music and chatter of the
cafe and was visibly disturbed when anyone approached her. To Charlie,
she seemed paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe or
was too scared too. She had a blank stare in
(02:00):
her face. I mean, like I said, I don't even
know her name. To Charlie mentioned this woman in episode eight.
I asked him to track her down for an interview,
but like he says, she couldn't tell me her name.
And when I first talked to her, I went over
and she wasn't really talking. I just asked her as like,
can I sit down. She's kind of like nodded, and
(02:23):
I sat down next to her and I just started,
you know, talking, Hey, I'm you know, I'm from America too,
and you know what's going on? And there wasn't much
information that she was giving me. It was just kind
of like, I mean, the lights were on, no one
was home at the time. Charlie was hanging out with
(02:44):
an Austrian guy who'd been living in India for eight years.
He had traveled from Austria to India with a terminal
cancer diagnosis. Healed himself there and with his passport expired,
he just stayed one of the many who followed the
grid in India. And I trusted the guy who was
very intelligent, knew something about everything type guy just had information,
(03:08):
just a lot of information. He said, he's like, it
looks like Totra. The Austrian automatically identified this woman's erratic
behavior as a reaction to the poisonous and psychoactive nightshade
to Torah, and he gave me the whole rundown about
like the Yogis will give it to people that that
aren't going far enough in their opinion, what does that mean?
(03:33):
They're they're not having as as deep of a spiritual
experience as they hope. They're not going inwards enough. They're
not they're not making progress in their opinion, They're not
making it to the next level, and so the satura
will be used to take these people to the next level.
(03:54):
Precisely the way that I understand it is it's used
as like how I would use psilocybin to get to
another level, but it's a much more intense psychedelic and
is used without people's knowling because it can just be
slipped in food tea as well. Charlie managed to get
(04:18):
some information out of the woman. She had traveled from
Hawaii to India to attend two back to back silent
yoga retreats and was participating in a dry fast during
the second, which might have set her off. But according
to the Austrian, what was going on with this woman
didn't look like a response to her conditions or lack
of sustenance. Her behavior looked like the effects of something
(04:40):
far more dangerous and deadly. Data The nightshade this woman
was allegedly altered by as a trumpet shaped flower that
blooms in a variety of colors. It can be pure white, purple,
a golden yellow. It blossoms in a shrub found in
ornamental gardens or growing wild along roadsides in India, and
(05:04):
because it's common there, it can result in accidental exposure,
though there aren't times its potent toxin is used intentionally.
The entire plant is poisonous from the roots to the seeds,
though according to an article in the National Library of Medicine,
the most concentrated levels of tropain alkaloids are found in
the flowers, blooms, and seeds. These tropain alkaloid properties include hyociamine, atropine,
(05:31):
and scopolamine, which when used separately with an awareness of dosage,
can help aid anything from digestive issues to motion sickness,
to Parkinson's to heart problems. But when these three are
combined in a toxic trio, they're deadly and can easily
lead to psychosis. When I was looking for stories about
(05:51):
people who have been dangerously affected by tetaura, I found
one reported in Vice about a man in Romania who,
after consuming detaura seeds, fell into a deep sleep, but
when he woke, he didn't know if he was awake
or in a knight. He experienced terrifying hallucinations of monsters
chasing him, and like Charlie, he didn't see things as
(06:13):
they were. At one point during his episode, he was
desperately trying to find his girlfriend and what he thought
were train cars but were actually bushes. Eventually he found
out that he'd been drugged by some guys who had
robbed him. They took everything but left him in a
psychotic state. He barely survived. As he said in the article,
under the influence of tatora, you can't really tell whether
(06:36):
or not you're awake and could easily jump in front
of a truck. Tatora can be ingested, smoked, or absorbed
topically and something like a lotion, and it can be
used against others without their knowledge, which is something Charlie
pointed out earlier from what he had heard from the
Austrian Tatora's used on yoga or meditation retreats to get
(06:58):
people to go deeper, further and hit this edge of
enlightenment that, as we've heard, is psychosis. Though I couldn't
find someone to talk to in the yoga meditation world
with experience around datra, I did speak to a shaman
from Costa Rica or a contemporary corndero, which is what
Alberto Roman prefers to be called. Alberto is very aware
(07:22):
of the potential dangers of data and ayahuasca circles. Ayahuasca
is considered the vine of the soul, in some cases
the vine of the dead. So most people who drink it,
one of the experiences that they will consistently share is
a connection communion with something beyond their ordinary awareness that
(07:45):
is fulfilling. Deep. Ayahuasca is an Amazonian brew that originated
among indigenous communities in South America. As a courandero, Alberto
leads people through these ayouasca ceremonies. So when I do
a ceremony, I treat everyone there as if they are
shamans themselves, because typically in the old days, you know,
(08:08):
there was a woman or somebody who would drum and
chant and dance and receive some sort of information about
what's happening in the habitat, or they would drink a
potion and from their dispense wisdom. But now everybody wants
to drink. So when I bring people into my circle,
I tell them they're self shamanizing, not only for themselves,
(08:30):
but for the group. So there's a level of accountability
and responsibility that they have to also meet me at.
But not all courandero or sammons have a moral compass
like Alberto. That's when the torah comes into play. There
has been a lot of controversy among people in this
(08:52):
horizon around the use of datura because at certain doses
it can have benefits, dosage and intension like anything else.
Courandets and are not gurus. These are people also in
a process of understanding who they are. They can be
seduced by the money, by the power, by the status
(09:14):
that's being brought to them by different cultures. And so
when you mix ayahuasca, which is really you know, two
main ingredients of the ayahuasca line and the chatuna leaves,
then you have the traditional Ayahuaska experience. Not some people,
when they add the tuda, they open up a space
where where the participants is a little bit more suggestible
(09:35):
to the influence of puddos or pandas who who might
have either good intentions. I think that the tuda will
will accelerate a process or might use it to suggest
to a woman to have sex or to you know,
bring more money to themselves. We've always had that in
any tradition, you know, there's always there's always people that
(09:58):
appropriate the lineage for their own their own gains. So
it's not only a problem or a challenge within our communities.
It happens in zen you know, you know the West
Coast is always full of scandals with the zen Masters
that all of a sudden have not dealt with the
with their shadow of sexuality and intimacy and get all
the boundaries confused. So data it can be very, very dangerous.
(10:22):
So you know it's all about dosage. But there's enough
of a discussion in the community around it that's proven
that there's too many people that are have walked into
the tradition without really spending the requisite amount of communion
with these things. You know, could you speak to like
more of the effects of data when it's used or
(10:42):
when it's odd, it's so horrific, so you just kind
of go into this dark space. Sometimes you're you're talking
about larger doses and you're you're in mobile. Immobile is
how Charlie described the American woman at the cafe. He
said she was paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe,
which is what as soporific like data will do. You
(11:04):
can have beautiful visions and you're also more suggestible, so
when somebody tells you something or feeds you something information,
you're less likely to challenge. This makes me think of
Babbage's influence over Charlie. Like it was stated last episode,
he was a puppet on a string. So the torah,
(11:24):
like any mind altering drug, can be used as a
form of control and an abuse of power, which is
a dynamic that can easily come into play between a
student and teacher or a follower, and they're a leader.
Powers the capacity to affect and be affected. There's a
positive side to power, which affirms liberates as active, and
(11:47):
there's a negative side to power, which typically hinders, hampers,
and restricts. So I think the boucles, the dark magicians
what they're doing. Ultimately we use that example of power.
They're restricting your capacity to be free, to live, to
be liberated, to be active, to activate all all your potential.
(12:08):
They're keeping that within a certain a certain range for
their benefit. Tatora is not only abused in some spiritual ceremonies.
In an article published by Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, it's
been called roadside poison when it's baked into a cookie
or another digestible and offered to unsuspecting devotees attending Hindu
(12:30):
festivals like Ali and Shivaratri. The effects of the Tatorah
forces people into a suggestible state, which has in some
cases resulted in their being robbed or sexually assaulted. Is
tata as common a threaten India as it seems, I
asked in Kita about this. I have heard of the plant.
(12:50):
I've also seen it very commonly growing in the wild.
Whenever I see at my first thought is this is
a plant which is supposed to be a favorite with
Lord Shiva. I regularly see it being offered in Shiva temples,
and the second thought, this is poison. According to Hindu
religious text, tatorah is believed who have emerged from Lord
(13:13):
Shiva's chest after he drank the deadly poison Hallao. This
makes sense saying that Shiva is the god of death
and destruction because Tatora is associated with Shiva. The plant
has regularly offered, but not consumed, at Shiva Ratri, the
annual festival honoring Shiva. Now, people drinking bang or what
(13:35):
you call bang over there to get a high is
very common, But I do not know of anyone personally
who has ingested datura, maybe because of how deadly it
can get. I was talking to someone who has spent
a lot of a life in villages, and she said
that some people who like to stay high twenty four
seven would use a couple of tatura seeds along with
(13:57):
whatever else they're taking for their high. But it is
clearly not something people are as casual with as they
are with some their natural intoxicans like bang or bang.
Do you know anything about a toora being used in
these Hindu festivals? Again, no, it's bang or bang that
is used in holy but I have not personally seen
(14:21):
being used in festivals. I actually read last year this
newspaper report that said that around three people in a
family got really sick because they put the tura seats
in their shoes and they drank it because someone had
told them it can cure them of COVID And they
got really ill after it, and they were rushed to
(14:43):
a hospital and thankfully they were saved. But this is
how we hear of the tura when someone tries to
bring it into their daily life. I mean, as a child,
it was grilled into me that you will see this
plant around and just know that this is poison. So
when you listen to Charlie's story with Baba Ge, do
you think that it could be possible that he would
(15:04):
have been drugged with tatorah. From his account, he did
seem drugged, not in his usual state. Now, I can't
say if it was the tourah that was being used
to have some kind of hold over him. Only a
medical expert can qualify that. But if there is someone
who has been using plants pollingestion regularly and knows that
(15:29):
only a certain amount will get deadly and not beyond that,
they could have used it. It's definitely a possibility. This
is known first as something fatal and then as something
that is an intoxicant. So basically, if someone possibly Babaje,
had a knowledge of dosage with tatorah, they could use
(15:51):
the plant as an intoxicant to affect another person whom
they wanted to control, but would have enough awareness of
the plant's potency not to kill them. After the break,
we'll hear with Charley thinks was he drugged by tatorah
or is it something else? Entirely, Charlie Marinelli got something
(16:14):
out of his visit to India. He wasn't prepared for
a psychotic break. He had never been diagnosed with mental
health issues in the past, nor had he taken anything
that wouldn't do such a long episode. But to Torah,
I mean it can last six months. It can never
go away, but it can last six months of psychosis. Charlie,
(16:34):
psychosis lasted two months, not six, but it was two
months too long. Why do you feel like you might
have been slipped to Tora? It just adds up that
Taura makes sense because I mean, even being on heavy
antipsychotics after the fact, I was still in a psychotic
state until I got out of the hospital in Austin,
(16:57):
until I really got that dose of lithium for a week.
Charlie describes this lithium dose as a chemical lobotomy, and
then I started coming out of it, but I was
still so confused up until that point, and just thinking
that I was controlling a whole lot more in my
surroundings than I was. The timeline makes sense. We're wired
(17:21):
as humans to connect a cause to an effect, So
to say that Charlie psychosis was an effect of to
Torah makes his surreal experience makes sense, and knowing this
information could prevent us from falling into the same trap.
But like the other stories we've covered an astray, this
is a gray area. We don't definitively know what triggered
(17:43):
Charlie psychosis, just like we don't know what happened to
Ryan Chambers, who presumably had a reaction to the anti
malarial drug he was prescribed. Or Justin Alexander Schetler, who
allegedly trusted a bad Sadu. Or Jonathan Spalen, whose disappearance
is surrounded by endless possibilities, or Russell whose body was
(18:03):
found but his cause of death remains a mystery. There
is no conclusive cause behind the disappearances of these men,
but there is one thing we know. India syndrome didn't
have anything to do with it. Why isolate India? This
is New Delhi based therapist, author, and international speaker on
(18:24):
karma and consciousness Susie Singh, who I spoke to about
black magic in the last episode as a listener of AUSTRAI.
Singh has insightful thoughts on issues that have been raised
in the podcast, which he shared in an interview within
Keyta and Me. What about the praise for shamanism in
Peru and the Iowa's tourism in South America? There have
(18:44):
been reports of people who died after consuming the hellucygenet
teach a plant. So perhaps the term should be Sika syndrome,
not India syndrome. When Singh redefined India syndrome as seeker syndrome,
it's so clearly articulated what I've been examining the podcast,
(19:07):
what it means to be a seeker and how far
one is willing to take that quest for enlightenment. But
it also shed light on my own compulsion to seek.
As seekers, we look outside ourselves for answers, which can
lead to profound experiences, and as we've witnessed, can also
lead to dangerous ones. But what if the answers we're
(19:29):
seeking aren't outside of us at all? So how do
you advise people to trust themselves more as opposed to
looking outside of themselves for answers. So the first principle
in the search is to know yourself. People think that
they know their mind, but that is one of the
(19:50):
hardest things to do. One needs to start by observing
your thoughts, yourself talk, your constant judgment about people and things,
your beliefs, behaviors, triggers, hot buttons, likes and dislikes, so
mechanisms and fears, and practice with this regularly so that
(20:10):
you can understand what is making you suffer, because what
we are really striving to do is to give up
the suffrag. The second principle is to own responsibility for
finding your own truth, whether it's enlightenment, whether it's healing.
We cannot expect that to be done by a second
(20:33):
or third person. You must make it your own responsibility
to find your troop or to find your healing, because
that's the only way that will motivate you to work
upon yourself. And the third principle is never give your
power away. Learn to question things, and a true teacher
will always take the trouble to explain it to you.
(20:54):
A false teacher will subject you to authority and demand
your trust. Trust, however, even by a teacher, must be earned.
When it's given without truth, What the other is doing
is taking your power away. They are taking away your
power to think, to discern, to say no, to walk away.
To protect yourself, never trust anyone blindly, do your checks
(21:17):
on the person who wish to follow. Always follow and
trust your own intuition because you do have what I
call an inner guide, and that guide awakened you to
your own quest. How can you not listen to your
own inner guide. For women especially, I would say never
(21:37):
meet baba's alone. The funny thing is women know this,
and yet they continue to do it, you know, regardless
of what claims these babas make about healing you. And
this applies for people who are highly respected in society.
It applies to people that your family may no one
trust very deeply. I've had many incidents myself where I
(21:59):
have been asked to sort of meet in private, and
I have always said no. So it's very important that
we do not fall into this trap because we have
to understand there's a whole spin off industry related to
spiritual healing, so we should not walk into any movie
traps yet. Seeing also mentions being weary of taking food
(22:21):
or drink from spiritual teachers, especially if you've just met them,
or being initiated, and to any spiritual practice you don't
have awareness or understanding of when we are really yearning
for enlightenment over some answers of the spiritual response. We
are very suggestible and we get very excited, like little
children in a toy shop when we find someone who
(22:43):
seems to know more than we do, or who promises
us more than we can imagine, but be patient because
nothing is going to accelerate your growth like your own
spiritual practice. So trust in your own practice more than
trusting in some third person to come and make it
(23:06):
happen to you. When Singh was fifteen living in jaiper
a baba appeared outside the gate of her home. He
was wearing a string of holy basil beads around his neck,
which he removed and with no words exchanged, handed a
sing through the bars of the gate. She immediately put
the beads on, and when she looked up, he had vanished.
(23:29):
This exchange activated something and saying, she started hiding in
the quiet of the house's storeroom so she could meditate,
something she'd never done before, but she now knew advanced
meditative techniques after the brief interaction with the unnamed baba.
Because of this, the baba ended up becoming one of
her greatest teachers. In all cases, in mind, I've had
(23:52):
the teachers appear for me, come to me, and I
have always told mine and tees, test your teacher before
you thrust your life innocently into their hands, and never
give you a power of discernment away to another. This
is a mistake a lot of people make where they
will blindly say, let the teacher decide for me what
(24:15):
I should do, and they call it faith. Like Sidhartha says,
your first requirement on the path is the ability to think. Sidhartha,
a character in Hermann has his nineteen twenty two books
by the same name, is on his own spiritual journey
to self discovery, which unfolds in the book, and he
(24:35):
says that on this spiritual path, the number one requirement
is one's ability to think. That is something that they
must never give away, because then you will not see
harm coming, you will not listen to your intuition. A
lot of the times we find that there are people
who are in very authoritative positions in large organizations, and
(24:59):
they're very well presented, and they speak very eloquently. The
greatest guru speak very little, but their words ring with truth.
There is one word these gurus are familiar with, and
we've used it a lot in Astray, and that's enlightenment.
After the break Seeing clarifies this term. But first she
(25:22):
asks a simple question, why are you seeking enlightened? Why
do you want that enlightenment? As a seeker herself saying,
as a firsthand relationship to the quest for enlightenment, and
she survived two near death experiences on this journey, which
enabled her to have an even clearer understanding of what
(25:45):
it all means. Most people seek enlightenment to escape their suffering.
This is one of the key reasons why they fall
victim to false gurus and meet with dangerous consequences. People
want instant hirana. Everything today is I want to know
over the counter kind of just a drug. Just give
(26:06):
me a pill that will make me feel peaceful, that
will make me feel instantly better. But that's addiction. That
is not enlightenment. That is not spirituality. Spirituality is about
doing the work, and it's called work for a reason.
It's called work because it feels like work. The work
(26:27):
is the hard stuff, the issues we avoid that keep
us up at night or have haunted us our entire lives,
throwing us into the same patterns we relive until we're
too damned tired too. Only then are we ready to
do the work, asking for help, going to therapy, joining
recovery group, finding spiritual guidance through a vetted teacher. This
(26:48):
is about sitting with our shadow, the dark stuff we
don't want to look at, but finding awareness and understanding
around it. That's the work from someone who's a practitioner.
Her stuff, i can tell you, is terrifying. It's hard
struggle about struggling against yourself. It's about battling your own
bad habits, your own tendencies, about not getting provoked. It's
(27:13):
about someone insulting me to my face and me wanting
to react sharply and yet trying to hold on to
my center and my piece in that moment when you're triggered.
It's very, very hard to do that. But that is
the practice, and that is the struggle. So it's not
comfortable and beautiful. It's extremely uncomfortable, and like I said,
(27:37):
it's a continuous battle. So what thing is saying is
that enlightenment is not a quick fact, nor is it
a destination. Enlightenment is a gradual process of purifying one's consciousness.
It unfolds through intense in a work, quite like water
coming to a boil, and once the boiling point is reached,
(28:00):
the transformation occurs. A teacher can only guide you, but
the inner work of transforming harmful habits, resisting damaging tendencies,
creation of virtue's building of capacities, intensification of your aspiration,
dissolving the equal mind. All these have to be done
(28:24):
by the seeker himself. So if someone is promising you enlightenment,
we want that, it is deception. In nineteen eighty six,
when I was training under Shishu Rashankar Shui Shri Ravishankar
was one of Thingh's earliest spiritual teachers. He said to me, Susie,
I can open the window and point you to the move,
(28:46):
but I cannot get you there. You will have to
make that journey yourself. So enlightenment is a process and
one the seeker has to be their own guide. For Akita,
would you still consider yourself a seeker after doing a
dry Yeah, definitely, I remain a seeker or even after
(29:06):
doing this podcast. Our hectic life today does not allow
the in build time, space and encouragement for someone to sit, contemplate, introspect, meditate,
or take a mental health break. And that's why seeking
becomes such a thing. Our mental and emotional health needs
get postponed and suppressed to such a point that they
(29:28):
feel the need to drop everything and desperately look for
answers outside. If anything, this podcast has reinforced to me
that seeking, questioning, openness of mind, curiosity, and understanding new
things need to be on our everyday to do list,
not just on our bucket list. As always in Ket's
response is thoughtful answer sinct, but this question wasn't as
(29:52):
easy for me to answer. In reliving Charlie's story with
him and speaking to others who've experienced similar psychotic episodes
in India and other countries, I've observed something about all
of them. These see do not view their psychotic breaks
as being solely harmful or scary. One person I spoke to,
(30:12):
who wanted to remain anonymous, said her psychotic episode didn't
happen to her. It happened for her. It's given her
a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her,
and in doing so, it was empowering. Charlie has said
the same thing. I know this is a skewed way
of viewing an experience that most of us would consider terrifying,
(30:34):
but it makes me think of Plato's allegory of the cave.
In the allegory, prisoners who have been confined to a
cave from birth are chained facing a blank wall. There
is a fire behind them, and when an object passes
in front of the fire, these prisoners classify the object's shadow,
perceiving the shadow as an actual entity, so the shadows
(30:56):
are the prisoner's truth. One of the prisoners is set free.
He's let out of the cave into the sunshine, which
initially blinds him. He slowly adjusts to the light. He's
told the objects around him, trees, birds, people are real,
while the shadows in the cave are an illusion, just
a reflection of the truth. Excited, the freeman returns to
(31:20):
the cave to tell the prisoners about what he's learned.
When he enters the cave, his eyes don't adjust to
the darkness, so he can't see the shadows the prisoners
are still identifying as real. When the freeman tells the
prisoners what he's discovered outside the cave, they're hostile and
resist his trying to free them, so this newly awakened
(31:41):
man leaves the cave free but alone. Plato's allegory shows
that like these prisoners, most people are satisfied staying in
their comfort zone and can be resistant or reject anyone
who points us out, sees things differently, or just wants
to escape. The Cave, Charlie relates to this, I have
(32:03):
to say that probably the biggest cost for me that
I think I'm still struggling with is being discredited by
my family and being kind of treated as I guess
lesser comes to mind treated how people with mental illness
in America are treated. It makes you wonder to such
(32:28):
a deep level of what your reality is to you
and why other people won't accept this reality and go
farther than not accepting it but ostracize cue for it.
Though Charlie's dad, having traveled through India with similar intentions
to Charlie, is more aware of what he's going through,
(32:50):
it's been harder on the rest of his family, who
are understandably concerned about Charlie slipping back into psychosis. But
if we look at the freeman who escapes the Cave
as someone like Charlie who's awakened to a new reality
that others might not understand and or want to understand,
a reality that can be isolating but also liberating, then
(33:12):
I think the answer to the question we've been examining
is the cost of enlightenment may be enlightenment itself, but
I guess that's ultimately a question for you to answer,
and Keita's suggested organizations aiding civilians with the pandemic in
(33:33):
India are listed in the show notes. Thanks for your support.
Astray is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Today's episode of Astray, Seeker Syndrome, was produced, written, and
narrated by Me, Caroline Slaughter and keitaand is my co
producer and Gavi Watts as our supervising producer. Astray was
(33:54):
sound produced by Tune Welders, with score and sound design
by Jason Shannon and mix by Harper Harris. Executive producers
are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Elsie Crawley. Thanks for listening,
(34:33):
School of Humans.
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