April 3, 2024 • 35 mins
In this mesmerizing and introspective episode of The Passage, the Ferryman, voiced by Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, The Walking Dead), ushers in a passenger whose journey through the realms of consciousness transformed a generation. Timothy Leary, voiced by Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks / Silicon Valley), an emblem of the psychedelic revolution and a figure of boundless controversy, steps aboard, his legacy a kaleidoscope of enlightenment, rebellion, and the quest for transcendence.
As they navigate the swirling mists of perception and reality, Leary recounts his odyssey—a saga marked by his advocacy for psychedelic drugs, his countless encounters with the law, and his daring escapes from the confines of societal norms. Lauded by some as a brave neuronaut and a hero of American consciousness, and vilified by others as the most dangerous man in America, Leary's life is a testament to the power of ideas to ignite change and challenge the status quo.
In this episode, the Ferryman delves beyond Leary's counter-culture exploits and confrontational persona, uncovering the multifaceted individual behind the myth. Leary reflects on his journey, from his groundbreaking research in psychology to his role as a pied piper of the mind-expanding sixties, inviting listeners to reconsider the man whose mantra, "Turn on, tune in, drop out," became the soundtrack of an era.
But as the journey reaches its zenith, a sobering revelation emerges—despite his mastery in escaping the physical and mental confines of the conventional world, there are fates from which even the most adept escape artist cannot flee. Leary confronts the ultimate trip, a voyage from which there is no return, and in doing so, he is forced to face the essence of his own legacy and the ripples it left in the fabric of society and individual consciousness.
In this episode of The Passage listeners are invited to embark on a journey through the mind and legacy of Timothy Leary, exploring the delicate interplay between freedom and consequence, enlightenment and delusion.
Traverse the uncharted territories of the human psyche, where the tales of Timothy Leary, the Psychedelic Sage, challenges our perceptions of reality and legacy. Tune in, and join us on the final trip, where the boundaries of consciousness are transcended. Written by Rob Mosca.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
I regret to tell you that very many American.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Lives in love.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Was heard to shouts from the car. He's dead. Whether
he referred to president or four hours, people must get
up and google identification.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
This road is not on any map.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and
their greatest fear.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All I ask for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives
and the great temporary that is the land we're living.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
These are their stories.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
This is the passage.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
We've arrived early to pick up this next passenger, to
bear witness to the end of this chapter before shepherding
him forth. America came of age during an industrial revolution,
(02:33):
a time of capital and progress and a slow push
toward a certain sameness. The Nuclear Age brought about the
nuclear family, TV dinners the suburbs. Into this age of
conformity burst our passenger, Timothy Leary.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
He spent his.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Life escaping breaking out of being another cog in society,
breaking out.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Of prisons physical and mental.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
No institution could contain him be a military, academic, marital,
or criminal. Indeed, he was arrested thirty six times and
once pulled off and escaped, the likes of which Billy
the Kid would salute first and foremost. Timothy Leary was
(03:46):
a student of consciousness, a psychologist, and then the trip
in Mexico, he was introduced to mushrooms containing the psychedelic
compound psilocybin. This introduction redirected the course of his life
(04:08):
and the course of the nation. In Harvard, he dove
in at first to psychedelia, first exploring it as a
tool of psychiatry, and then expanding it as a means
to an elevated consciousness and understanding of the mystic. These
(04:29):
blurry edges defied understood science, and he was ousted from it.
So he became a sort of a folk hero, standing
against the nuclear age of sameness. Guys like him, they
kind of see how we see on this side of
the veil. Having ventured beyond the conventions of his own
(04:55):
prescribed life. After escaping the cave where he'd been unconsciously
self imprisoned, and having then expanded across the shores of consciousness,
where all words and forms would melt away like castles
(05:15):
made of sand, And having then lost his mind and
the waves of infinite interconnectedness, he returned to coax others
to take the trip to them. He was a hero,
the captain of the Psychonauts, the High Priests of LSD.
(05:39):
What little unity that had held this nation together after
the Great World Wars disintegrated in his time. The glue
that bound the pieces of America together crumbled, and it
fractured on ideological lines old verse, young, poor, verse, rich, liberal, conservative,
(06:01):
the establishment first, the counter culture. Blood flowed in the
streets of Chicago. Blood flowed in Mississippi, Berkeley, Kent State,
blood flowed in Dallas, Harlem, and Vietnam. The disintegration was
fueled by a cultural revolution, fueled by a collective awakening,
(06:24):
fueled by him.
Speaker 6 (06:30):
Why why why not?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Hello?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Hello?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Follow me? Not? Damn? Okay? What's the deal here? Man?
Are you the angel of death come to shove me
off to the great beyond? Or a complex hallucination conjured
by a dying mind to brace itself for oblivion. I
(07:25):
am neither Okay, not really an answer, but that's okay.
A thing doesn't have to be real to reveal the truth.
So whether you're real or not, let me warn you
that this is no ordinary ghost you're chauffeuring. No, sir,
I am the very spirit of the nineteen sixties itself,
(07:47):
ready to embark on the next great trip beyond the
limits of the human nervous system. Hell, I figured that's
why you pick me up and ken Casey's old psychedelic
school bus here. Yeah there, indeed, cragging me up, Larry,
(08:08):
take a seat, not damn Yeah, yes, heavy man. You know,
(08:40):
like any good scientists, I have a lot of questions,
so embrace yourself, the most pressing one being to which
far galactic outpost are you taking me?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, I have no answers, at least not for the
questions you will ask, only passengers and the tales they
pay for my carrying them across this final dark.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Now tell me what story will you pay me? With scientists?
Speaker 6 (09:10):
Hmm, I've only ever asked where did we come from?
And where are we going? Friend? You know, like Galileo,
I was persecuted for the heresy of reporting the facts
of my research in the face of institutionalized dogma. Like Socrates,
(09:31):
I was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth.
Like Wilhelm Reich. My research was banned and I was
incarcerated by the state. In fact, President Nixon called me
the most dangerous man in America. I was j Edgar
Hoover's public Enemy number one. Yeah, I was a threat
(09:51):
to the Judeo Christian adult authority that was running the
hive of the time, so they had to lock me up.
But I did more than escape. I taught an entire
generation how to escape with me. My whole life, I've
(10:13):
been fascinated with understanding the human need to escape, what
force acts upon the mind to make a jail cell home,
or struggles to transcend its own happiness. In the early
nineteen fifties, I received my doctorate in psychology. It was
a booming industry at the time, after the Great Depression,
(10:34):
the war, and the bomb There was big money and
keeping the man in the gray suit from having a
nervous breakdown. It wasn't long before I found myself at
Berkeley conducting research into modeling the human personality. I was
the first in my field to chart and organize the
very characteristics of human interaction itself. Yes, my models quickly
(10:58):
became the standard of diagnosis for therapists everywhere. By my
early thirties. Well, I had it all, a wife, two kids,
a house by the beach, academic acclaim. But it wasn't
enough that Berkeley, the academic nightlife was positively back and all.
(11:23):
There were drinks, there were marijuana cias. There were women. Oh,
now there were women. My wife, my wife, mary Anne.
(11:46):
It's just that she didn't mind the occasional dalliance with
a student or faculty wife, so long as I stuck
to the one simple rule, don't fall in love. But
like any rule I've ever been given, you know, I
had to break it. I met another woman, younger, smarter
than most of her age, but not too smart, if
(12:07):
you know what I mean. Well, had a real fire
in her. By the second time we slept together, I
knew I had broken the one rule. Worse than that, though,
I got careless. One night, when we were both drunk,
my wife called me out, and I didn't care enough
anymore to deny the affair. Maryanne accused me of breaking
(12:32):
our one rule, don't fall in love, and I reminded
her that that was her rule, not mine, and she
could she could, she could well, she could leave if
she didn't like it. So she got in the car.
Marianne sat there for a few minutes before coming back inside.
She instead went straight to bed without another word. Now
over the following week's life just went on much as
(12:55):
it did before. You know, she never spoke of the
one rule again, her rule, And I, well, I didn't.
I didn't stop seeing my mistress. I mean, what difference
with that of man? But I did you know, I
made concessions to my wife. I spent more time with
her and became more discreet in my extramarital affairs. And
(13:18):
you know, that's the thing to remember here. I think
I tried. That's I really tried. Weeks later, on the
morning of my birthday, I woke up to a note
on the pillow. Written on it were seven simple words,
Happy birthday, you son of a bitch. Well, here we
(13:42):
go again, I thought. I stumbled down the stairs to
the kitchen and discovered she baked me a cake. The
candles were lit, they were halfway burnt down. I was
transfixed as I watched them flicker. The dance of their flames,
the colors they radiated more vibrant than normal, like there
(14:04):
was a message somehow trying to reach me if I
studied them hard enough. And then that's that is when
I heard it. The car, our car in the garage,
sitting there idling mary Anne, good old, predictable mary Anne,
(14:28):
once again two hung up on her issues, to do
what I've done my whole life, take the next necessary
step forward. I saw her sitting there in the front seat,
with her hands on the wheel in her Sunday best,
leaning forward and prayer, asking to be forgiven her cowardice,
(14:51):
or for the strength that she lacked. It didn't matter.
I had enough. I would answer her prayers and end this.
Yanked the door open. She fell limply into my arms.
Her eyes were closed, but there was a faint smile
of satisfaction that I hadn't seen on her face in years.
(15:13):
I attempted to rouse her, but she she she refused.
That's when it hit me. The carb was still running,
the windows were rolled up. How long had she had she?
(15:37):
I checked her pulse and found none. I shook her again.
I shouted her name. Then I cursed it. Stupid, stupid
mary Anne. She killed herself carbon monoxide poisoning. She didn't
(16:01):
mean to, right, she couldn't have. It wasn't my fault. No,
I told myself that, standing there in the kitchen on
the phone, waiting for the operator to connect me to
the police station. From the corner of my eye, she
stood there watching. Being a trained psychologist, I knew it
(16:29):
wasn't her. The real her was still in the garage.
So I forced myself not to look at what was
clearly a a hallucination of my wife, and instead focused
on the birthday cake on the counter. The candles were
(16:51):
still burning. I found myself spacing out on flames, colors,
scouring them for a glimpse of a way out. Then
Mary Anne stepped over to the birthday cake and with
a wink, blew out the candles before I could make ash.
(17:15):
The last thing I heard before the darkness took hold
was the operator asking me if I was still there.
Whatever the darkness was, that, claimed Mary Anne, Well it
was it was mine now, and I had I had
what a psychologist might call a nervous breakdown. I quit Berkeley,
(17:40):
got married again. The mistress, of course, in for a penny,
in for a pound, But that quickly fell apart. I
traveled to Europe at a colleague there who, well with
a little of the old leery charms, set me up
with a lectureship at Harvard. Still the darkness lingerede and
with it so did Marianne. I would find her standing
(18:02):
at the back of the classroom, from darkened corners, behind
the wheel of empty cars, just watching, unable to speak,
unable to escape something I had to be done. After
fifteen years in the field of psychology, I arrived at
the sorry conclusion that psychology wasn't doing much to solve
(18:27):
my emotional or mental problems, much less that of the
American people, if not the entire fucking human race. So
while I was in Mexico, I'm an anthropologist. Friend of
mine told me how well he was studying the indigenous
shaman of the area, and well they use psilocybin mushrooms
(18:48):
to treat mental illness, and well he confided in me
that he had tried it, and he swore doing so
gave him the insight to overcome his shell shock. I
scored some mushrooms from the hotel staff, and I took
them pool side. The fung i tasted even worse than
they looked bitter, stringy. Of course, I saw mary Anne,
(19:13):
still in her Sunday best standing there watching and I
almost got up to.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Leave, and then.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
They kicked in. I could feel something shifting. I felt strange,
mildly nauseous, detached, Everything quivered with life, even inanimate objects.
(19:43):
I gave way to the light and I discovered a
see of new possibilities, other realities at the swimming pool
(20:03):
that day, I learned more about the human mind than
I had in my entire professional career. And when the
trip faded, Marianne was nowhere to be found. I was free.
Yeah it worked. I returned to America and got approval
(20:31):
to set up the Harvard Psychedelic Project. And you know,
people often forget that it wasn't the counterculture that introduced
America to the psychedelic revolution. It was the suits. It
was us at Harvard, the professors, the medical industrial complex,
the CIA with their black budget mk ultra LSD experiments
(20:52):
in pursuit of the perfect truth serum or brainwashed assassins.
They distilled their own fear, paranoia, and aggression, engineered a
concentrated solution of ongoing trauma. The results weren't pretty asked
Bobby Kennedy, and Sir and Sir Ham asked the poor
(21:13):
souls who found themselves secretly dosed with the weapon grade
LSD by their uncle Sam and learned the hard way
that they couldn't fly from their hotel window. We've all
heard those stories. I mean, thankfully we had more success
than the spooks. We made significant advancements in psychedelics, in
(21:33):
the treatment of trauma, you know, we made incredible breakthroughs
with the hardened convicts. And while we produced a lifetime
search for existential meaning in mere hours, I mean, that's
not what they wanted. They wanted to abstract giddiness that
both tantalized and frightened the masses. It wasn't long before
(21:56):
the halls of Harvard were packed with spaced out, fresh
and outraged faculty. I tried to show them the keys
to psychological liberation, but all they saw was chaos. I mean, well,
I know, no surprise here. But the Psychedelic Project was
shut down and I was forced to resign. But it
(22:18):
was too late. The proverbial cat was out of the back.
Now my home was besieged with counterculture pilgrims desperate for
a shortcut to enlightenment. Now, what I offered was science,
what they wanted was mysticism. With a little bit of
neurochemical lightning, they learned that they didn't have to die
for the generals, or the CEOs or the middle class,
middle aged whiskey drinking masses. Which is exactly when my
(22:42):
research finally was taken seriously by all the wrong people.
Shortly after Tricky Dick decided that I was the most
dangerous man in a mayor well, my door was kicked
in by an ambitious Da G Gordon Lyddy, who along
(23:06):
with twenty three armed sheriffs, ransacked my home. Now they
didn't find anything, and well, the warrant was thrown out,
but I got the message and I split the scene
at large again. I headed south with my lover and
two children back to Mexico. Got as far as the
border before the pigs pulled this over for a strip search.
(23:28):
They have away with massages. I was standing there naked
while some pig rummaged through my belongings. When I saw
her again, Mary Anne, smiling from the corner. I knew
then what was coming. The pigs found an ounce of
marijuana in my daughter's underwear. Naturally, I took the wrap
(23:49):
for it. It was my first offense, but well, because
I was the infamous LSD Guru, they slapped me with
a thirty year sentence to be served at the California
Colony Prison, but I was plotting my escape before the
gavalive at Hammered. Upon arrival, the first thing they did
was give me a personal diagnostic test. Yes, the same
(24:09):
personal diagnostic test that I myself created to assess flight
risk in prisoners. So I gave the answers of an
ideal prisoner and found myself in minimal security. A few
weeks later, I was well scrambling over the prison walls
and shimmied a phone wire to freedom. From there, I
rendezvous with some contacts in the Weather Underground and was
(24:31):
smuggled out of the country. Well. Now in Algeria, I
was holed up with Eldridge Cleaver. I was a Minister
of Defense of the Black Panthers, a fellow expatriot and
expatriot in exile from the man. We collaborated on revolutionary
strategies until he grew impatient with my more racous impulses,
(24:57):
until inevitably the Panthers had well, they had escort me
out of Algeria at gunpoint. Well, eventually the CIA caught
up with me and Kabul. Next thing I know, I'm
back in California, standing before judge. Now, I just want
to take a second, because the only threat more dangerous
(25:21):
than any prophet or any monster, or is a trickster.
Anyone who preaches that the aim of the individual life
is to know yourself, not to kneel or to be obedient,
but to liberate yourself. Now that is heresy to suggest
that the primary goal in this existence is to treat
(25:42):
others as human beings, not to fear or oppress them. Oh,
that's dangerous. It flies in direct opposition to every fundamental
religion and every political party or military institution in service
of any state, any every I had the power and
(26:04):
the wisdom of the clown. And clowns are terrifying because
they are unpredictable. I was a threat because I provided
access to the extraordinary. I held the key to unlock
all the cages, and I handed it out to anyone
who wanted it. But Mary, Yeah, was there the whole trial,
(26:43):
watching with amused pity. The trial was quick and nasty.
The powers that be had learned their lesson. This time.
They were not locking me away in some rinking dink cage.
They put me in fulsome prism next door to another
(27:05):
infamous counterculture guru incarcerated there, Charles Manson looked up to you.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Entire generation did.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
Charlie made it clear that he had been expecting me.
I found a welcome package of cigarettes and paperbacks on
my bunk. We conversed through the air vent between ourselves
anywhere you wanted. At first, he tried to get in
my head and to rattle me. That's what I can
never figure out.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
You showed everyone that could have a new head, and
you never gave him one.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
That's it.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
That's the point I don't. I don't want to impose
my realities on other people. The idea is everybody takes
responsibility for their own nervous system, creates their own reality.
Anything else is brainwashing. And that's your scene, Charlie, not mine,
as your mistake.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
No one wants responsibility.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
Everyone wants to be told what to what's really true,
what's really real? Because this world inside our heads, in and out,
it's all death and I need to be told how.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
To face You're wrong, Charlie, look around you. It's all love,
not death.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
That's not what the woman in your sale says when
you're sleep at night.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
What's your name again, Mary something?
Speaker 7 (28:25):
Why don't you ask her if it's love or death.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That drives us?
Speaker 6 (28:38):
Like I said, he wanted to get inside my head
as badly as he wanted me inside his own. But
it didn't matter. I had accomplished what neither Mary Anne
nor the infamous Charles Manson ever could. I escaped, both
figuratively and literally. Years later, I was pardoned by the
governor and freed to a new world. The Hippies and
(29:00):
the weathermen and the panthers were gone. It was Reagan's
America now, and the psychedelic Revolution had been abandoned for
the power trip of cocaine in the stock market. The
same man I had co founded the Youth International Party with, indeed,
the same man I had vouched for on the stand
in the trial of the Chicago Seven, had become a
(29:22):
businessman a suit. The yippies had become yuppies, and I well.
I unfortunately realized that I was no longer a major
threat to the system, but something much worse, a minor celebrity.
Grandpa hippie babbling about drugs, love and the Revolution. I
(29:45):
learned playing the clown was worse than playing the guru. Still,
my infamy kept me high and off the streets. The
most dangerous man in America had retired into irrelevance. My
(30:07):
whole life has been about escaping, but not just my life.
I mean I mapped the human psyche and then discovered
how to go beyond it, to transcend, to explore, to escape.
You know, it was my father who gave me my
first lesson in escaping. Yeah, when he split the scene
(30:31):
when I was just a kid. He died drunk and
broken alone. My mother was determined that I would be
a better man than him, all the while never forgiving
me for being his son. Maybe that pain is what
drove me to understand people, the mechanics of the lack
(30:56):
of intimacy. Maybe that, in turn drove me to achieve
the success my mother believed beyond me. You see that
that's what I was trying to spare Marianne and the kids.
I wasn't going to leave her and the children the
way that my father left me and my mother. I
(31:16):
was determined to work it out to reach the next
level do you know if she got impatient. That's not
my fault, right, that's not my fault. I could have
fixed what was broken in her in us, but she
never gave me the chance. She gave up, she ran away.
I'm not the Okay. Yeah, looks like California out there. Huh.
(31:45):
So I guess it could be either heaven or hell.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Yeah, I'm not a fan of California either. I'm not
a fan of a dry heat anyway.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
You know, I haven't decided yet if this is real, yeah,
or just the last flicker of my dying mind.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Yeah, Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6 (32:08):
Yeah, I guess not. No, I did it. I escaped
(32:31):
them all, all the spooks and the pigs in their prisons.
I escaped life. But I guess I can't escape death.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Uh As in life, I step into death a man
liberated from all.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
Wait, what is that? Mary am Mary Anne? No, No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
No, no, Ferryman, you can't leave me here, Ferryman, Please,
you can't be real.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
You can't leave me here.
Speaker 8 (33:24):
You can't you can't here. You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
No.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
No, even gurus of their inner demons, no matter how
(34:06):
far out into the corners of consciousness, you get you
are still there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
The you that is most you of guilty conscious.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Cannot travel unencumbered, as this great teacher of men shall
learn on his passage.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Fairman. This episode
features Martin Starr as Timothy Leary. Written by Rob Mosca
with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski. Our
executive of producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
(35:08):
Music by Ben Lovitt, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
design by Dan Bush. Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Jan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising
producer is Josh Than. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski.
Produced by Dan Bush. The passages of production of iHeartRadio
(35:31):
and Cycopia Pictures
Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
I regret to tell you that very many American.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Lives in love.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Was heard to shouts from the car. He's dead. Whether
he referred to president or four hours, people must get
up and google identification.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
This road is not on any map.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and
their greatest fear.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All I ask for.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives
and the great temporary that is the land we're living.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
These are their stories.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
This is the passage.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
We've arrived early to pick up this next passenger, to
bear witness to the end of this chapter before shepherding
him forth. America came of age during an industrial revolution,
(02:33):
a time of capital and progress and a slow push
toward a certain sameness. The Nuclear Age brought about the
nuclear family, TV dinners the suburbs. Into this age of
conformity burst our passenger, Timothy Leary.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
He spent his.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Life escaping breaking out of being another cog in society,
breaking out.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Of prisons physical and mental.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
No institution could contain him be a military, academic, marital,
or criminal. Indeed, he was arrested thirty six times and
once pulled off and escaped, the likes of which Billy
the Kid would salute first and foremost. Timothy Leary was
(03:46):
a student of consciousness, a psychologist, and then the trip
in Mexico, he was introduced to mushrooms containing the psychedelic
compound psilocybin. This introduction redirected the course of his life
(04:08):
and the course of the nation. In Harvard, he dove
in at first to psychedelia, first exploring it as a
tool of psychiatry, and then expanding it as a means
to an elevated consciousness and understanding of the mystic. These
(04:29):
blurry edges defied understood science, and he was ousted from it.
So he became a sort of a folk hero, standing
against the nuclear age of sameness. Guys like him, they
kind of see how we see on this side of
the veil. Having ventured beyond the conventions of his own
(04:55):
prescribed life. After escaping the cave where he'd been unconsciously
self imprisoned, and having then expanded across the shores of consciousness,
where all words and forms would melt away like castles
(05:15):
made of sand, And having then lost his mind and
the waves of infinite interconnectedness, he returned to coax others
to take the trip to them. He was a hero,
the captain of the Psychonauts, the High Priests of LSD.
(05:39):
What little unity that had held this nation together after
the Great World Wars disintegrated in his time. The glue
that bound the pieces of America together crumbled, and it
fractured on ideological lines old verse, young, poor, verse, rich, liberal, conservative,
(06:01):
the establishment first, the counter culture. Blood flowed in the
streets of Chicago. Blood flowed in Mississippi, Berkeley, Kent State,
blood flowed in Dallas, Harlem, and Vietnam. The disintegration was
fueled by a cultural revolution, fueled by a collective awakening,
(06:24):
fueled by him.
Speaker 6 (06:30):
Why why why not?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Hello?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Hello?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Follow me? Not? Damn? Okay? What's the deal here? Man?
Are you the angel of death come to shove me
off to the great beyond? Or a complex hallucination conjured
by a dying mind to brace itself for oblivion. I
(07:25):
am neither Okay, not really an answer, but that's okay.
A thing doesn't have to be real to reveal the truth.
So whether you're real or not, let me warn you
that this is no ordinary ghost you're chauffeuring. No, sir,
I am the very spirit of the nineteen sixties itself,
(07:47):
ready to embark on the next great trip beyond the
limits of the human nervous system. Hell, I figured that's
why you pick me up and ken Casey's old psychedelic
school bus here. Yeah there, indeed, cragging me up, Larry,
(08:08):
take a seat, not damn Yeah, yes, heavy man. You know,
(08:40):
like any good scientists, I have a lot of questions,
so embrace yourself, the most pressing one being to which
far galactic outpost are you taking me?
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Well, I have no answers, at least not for the
questions you will ask, only passengers and the tales they
pay for my carrying them across this final dark.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Now tell me what story will you pay me? With scientists?
Speaker 6 (09:10):
Hmm, I've only ever asked where did we come from?
And where are we going? Friend? You know, like Galileo,
I was persecuted for the heresy of reporting the facts
of my research in the face of institutionalized dogma. Like Socrates,
(09:31):
I was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth.
Like Wilhelm Reich. My research was banned and I was
incarcerated by the state. In fact, President Nixon called me
the most dangerous man in America. I was j Edgar
Hoover's public Enemy number one. Yeah, I was a threat
(09:51):
to the Judeo Christian adult authority that was running the
hive of the time, so they had to lock me up.
But I did more than escape. I taught an entire
generation how to escape with me. My whole life, I've
(10:13):
been fascinated with understanding the human need to escape, what
force acts upon the mind to make a jail cell home,
or struggles to transcend its own happiness. In the early
nineteen fifties, I received my doctorate in psychology. It was
a booming industry at the time, after the Great Depression,
(10:34):
the war, and the bomb There was big money and
keeping the man in the gray suit from having a
nervous breakdown. It wasn't long before I found myself at
Berkeley conducting research into modeling the human personality. I was
the first in my field to chart and organize the
very characteristics of human interaction itself. Yes, my models quickly
(10:58):
became the standard of diagnosis for therapists everywhere. By my
early thirties. Well, I had it all, a wife, two kids,
a house by the beach, academic acclaim. But it wasn't
enough that Berkeley, the academic nightlife was positively back and all.
(11:23):
There were drinks, there were marijuana cias. There were women. Oh,
now there were women. My wife, my wife, mary Anne.
(11:46):
It's just that she didn't mind the occasional dalliance with
a student or faculty wife, so long as I stuck
to the one simple rule, don't fall in love. But
like any rule I've ever been given, you know, I
had to break it. I met another woman, younger, smarter
than most of her age, but not too smart, if
(12:07):
you know what I mean. Well, had a real fire
in her. By the second time we slept together, I
knew I had broken the one rule. Worse than that, though,
I got careless. One night, when we were both drunk,
my wife called me out, and I didn't care enough
anymore to deny the affair. Maryanne accused me of breaking
(12:32):
our one rule, don't fall in love, and I reminded
her that that was her rule, not mine, and she
could she could, she could well, she could leave if
she didn't like it. So she got in the car.
Marianne sat there for a few minutes before coming back inside.
She instead went straight to bed without another word. Now
over the following week's life just went on much as
(12:55):
it did before. You know, she never spoke of the
one rule again, her rule, And I, well, I didn't.
I didn't stop seeing my mistress. I mean, what difference
with that of man? But I did you know, I
made concessions to my wife. I spent more time with
her and became more discreet in my extramarital affairs. And
(13:18):
you know, that's the thing to remember here. I think
I tried. That's I really tried. Weeks later, on the
morning of my birthday, I woke up to a note
on the pillow. Written on it were seven simple words,
Happy birthday, you son of a bitch. Well, here we
(13:42):
go again, I thought. I stumbled down the stairs to
the kitchen and discovered she baked me a cake. The
candles were lit, they were halfway burnt down. I was
transfixed as I watched them flicker. The dance of their flames,
the colors they radiated more vibrant than normal, like there
(14:04):
was a message somehow trying to reach me if I
studied them hard enough. And then that's that is when
I heard it. The car, our car in the garage,
sitting there idling mary Anne, good old, predictable mary Anne,
(14:28):
once again two hung up on her issues, to do
what I've done my whole life, take the next necessary
step forward. I saw her sitting there in the front seat,
with her hands on the wheel in her Sunday best,
leaning forward and prayer, asking to be forgiven her cowardice,
(14:51):
or for the strength that she lacked. It didn't matter.
I had enough. I would answer her prayers and end this.
Yanked the door open. She fell limply into my arms.
Her eyes were closed, but there was a faint smile
of satisfaction that I hadn't seen on her face in years.
(15:13):
I attempted to rouse her, but she she she refused.
That's when it hit me. The carb was still running,
the windows were rolled up. How long had she had she?
(15:37):
I checked her pulse and found none. I shook her again.
I shouted her name. Then I cursed it. Stupid, stupid
mary Anne. She killed herself carbon monoxide poisoning. She didn't
(16:01):
mean to, right, she couldn't have. It wasn't my fault. No,
I told myself that, standing there in the kitchen on
the phone, waiting for the operator to connect me to
the police station. From the corner of my eye, she
stood there watching. Being a trained psychologist, I knew it
(16:29):
wasn't her. The real her was still in the garage.
So I forced myself not to look at what was
clearly a a hallucination of my wife, and instead focused
on the birthday cake on the counter. The candles were
(16:51):
still burning. I found myself spacing out on flames, colors,
scouring them for a glimpse of a way out. Then
Mary Anne stepped over to the birthday cake and with
a wink, blew out the candles before I could make ash.
(17:15):
The last thing I heard before the darkness took hold
was the operator asking me if I was still there.
Whatever the darkness was, that, claimed Mary Anne, Well it
was it was mine now, and I had I had
what a psychologist might call a nervous breakdown. I quit Berkeley,
(17:40):
got married again. The mistress, of course, in for a penny,
in for a pound, But that quickly fell apart. I
traveled to Europe at a colleague there who, well with
a little of the old leery charms, set me up
with a lectureship at Harvard. Still the darkness lingerede and
with it so did Marianne. I would find her standing
(18:02):
at the back of the classroom, from darkened corners, behind
the wheel of empty cars, just watching, unable to speak,
unable to escape something I had to be done. After
fifteen years in the field of psychology, I arrived at
the sorry conclusion that psychology wasn't doing much to solve
(18:27):
my emotional or mental problems, much less that of the
American people, if not the entire fucking human race. So
while I was in Mexico, I'm an anthropologist. Friend of
mine told me how well he was studying the indigenous
shaman of the area, and well they use psilocybin mushrooms
(18:48):
to treat mental illness, and well he confided in me
that he had tried it, and he swore doing so
gave him the insight to overcome his shell shock. I
scored some mushrooms from the hotel staff, and I took
them pool side. The fung i tasted even worse than
they looked bitter, stringy. Of course, I saw mary Anne,
(19:13):
still in her Sunday best standing there watching and I
almost got up to.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Leave, and then.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
They kicked in. I could feel something shifting. I felt strange,
mildly nauseous, detached, Everything quivered with life, even inanimate objects.
(19:43):
I gave way to the light and I discovered a
see of new possibilities, other realities at the swimming pool
(20:03):
that day, I learned more about the human mind than
I had in my entire professional career. And when the
trip faded, Marianne was nowhere to be found. I was free.
Yeah it worked. I returned to America and got approval
(20:31):
to set up the Harvard Psychedelic Project. And you know,
people often forget that it wasn't the counterculture that introduced
America to the psychedelic revolution. It was the suits. It
was us at Harvard, the professors, the medical industrial complex,
the CIA with their black budget mk ultra LSD experiments
(20:52):
in pursuit of the perfect truth serum or brainwashed assassins.
They distilled their own fear, paranoia, and aggression, engineered a
concentrated solution of ongoing trauma. The results weren't pretty asked
Bobby Kennedy, and Sir and Sir Ham asked the poor
(21:13):
souls who found themselves secretly dosed with the weapon grade
LSD by their uncle Sam and learned the hard way
that they couldn't fly from their hotel window. We've all
heard those stories. I mean, thankfully we had more success
than the spooks. We made significant advancements in psychedelics, in
(21:33):
the treatment of trauma, you know, we made incredible breakthroughs
with the hardened convicts. And while we produced a lifetime
search for existential meaning in mere hours, I mean, that's
not what they wanted. They wanted to abstract giddiness that
both tantalized and frightened the masses. It wasn't long before
(21:56):
the halls of Harvard were packed with spaced out, fresh
and outraged faculty. I tried to show them the keys
to psychological liberation, but all they saw was chaos. I mean, well,
I know, no surprise here. But the Psychedelic Project was
shut down and I was forced to resign. But it
(22:18):
was too late. The proverbial cat was out of the back.
Now my home was besieged with counterculture pilgrims desperate for
a shortcut to enlightenment. Now, what I offered was science,
what they wanted was mysticism. With a little bit of
neurochemical lightning, they learned that they didn't have to die
for the generals, or the CEOs or the middle class,
middle aged whiskey drinking masses. Which is exactly when my
(22:42):
research finally was taken seriously by all the wrong people.
Shortly after Tricky Dick decided that I was the most
dangerous man in a mayor well, my door was kicked
in by an ambitious Da G Gordon Lyddy, who along
(23:06):
with twenty three armed sheriffs, ransacked my home. Now they
didn't find anything, and well, the warrant was thrown out,
but I got the message and I split the scene
at large again. I headed south with my lover and
two children back to Mexico. Got as far as the
border before the pigs pulled this over for a strip search.
(23:28):
They have away with massages. I was standing there naked
while some pig rummaged through my belongings. When I saw
her again, Mary Anne, smiling from the corner. I knew
then what was coming. The pigs found an ounce of
marijuana in my daughter's underwear. Naturally, I took the wrap
(23:49):
for it. It was my first offense, but well, because
I was the infamous LSD Guru, they slapped me with
a thirty year sentence to be served at the California
Colony Prison, but I was plotting my escape before the
gavalive at Hammered. Upon arrival, the first thing they did
was give me a personal diagnostic test. Yes, the same
(24:09):
personal diagnostic test that I myself created to assess flight
risk in prisoners. So I gave the answers of an
ideal prisoner and found myself in minimal security. A few
weeks later, I was well scrambling over the prison walls
and shimmied a phone wire to freedom. From there, I
rendezvous with some contacts in the Weather Underground and was
(24:31):
smuggled out of the country. Well. Now in Algeria, I
was holed up with Eldridge Cleaver. I was a Minister
of Defense of the Black Panthers, a fellow expatriot and
expatriot in exile from the man. We collaborated on revolutionary
strategies until he grew impatient with my more racous impulses,
(24:57):
until inevitably the Panthers had well, they had escort me
out of Algeria at gunpoint. Well, eventually the CIA caught
up with me and Kabul. Next thing I know, I'm
back in California, standing before judge. Now, I just want
to take a second, because the only threat more dangerous
(25:21):
than any prophet or any monster, or is a trickster.
Anyone who preaches that the aim of the individual life
is to know yourself, not to kneel or to be obedient,
but to liberate yourself. Now that is heresy to suggest
that the primary goal in this existence is to treat
(25:42):
others as human beings, not to fear or oppress them. Oh,
that's dangerous. It flies in direct opposition to every fundamental
religion and every political party or military institution in service
of any state, any every I had the power and
(26:04):
the wisdom of the clown. And clowns are terrifying because
they are unpredictable. I was a threat because I provided
access to the extraordinary. I held the key to unlock
all the cages, and I handed it out to anyone
who wanted it. But Mary, Yeah, was there the whole trial,
(26:43):
watching with amused pity. The trial was quick and nasty.
The powers that be had learned their lesson. This time.
They were not locking me away in some rinking dink cage.
They put me in fulsome prism next door to another
(27:05):
infamous counterculture guru incarcerated there, Charles Manson looked up to you.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Entire generation did.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
Charlie made it clear that he had been expecting me.
I found a welcome package of cigarettes and paperbacks on
my bunk. We conversed through the air vent between ourselves
anywhere you wanted. At first, he tried to get in
my head and to rattle me. That's what I can
never figure out.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
You showed everyone that could have a new head, and
you never gave him one.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
That's it.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
That's the point I don't. I don't want to impose
my realities on other people. The idea is everybody takes
responsibility for their own nervous system, creates their own reality.
Anything else is brainwashing. And that's your scene, Charlie, not mine,
as your mistake.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
No one wants responsibility.
Speaker 7 (27:58):
Everyone wants to be told what to what's really true,
what's really real? Because this world inside our heads, in and out,
it's all death and I need to be told how.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
To face You're wrong, Charlie, look around you. It's all love,
not death.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
That's not what the woman in your sale says when
you're sleep at night.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
What's your name again, Mary something?
Speaker 7 (28:25):
Why don't you ask her if it's love or death.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That drives us?
Speaker 6 (28:38):
Like I said, he wanted to get inside my head
as badly as he wanted me inside his own. But
it didn't matter. I had accomplished what neither Mary Anne
nor the infamous Charles Manson ever could. I escaped, both
figuratively and literally. Years later, I was pardoned by the
governor and freed to a new world. The Hippies and
(29:00):
the weathermen and the panthers were gone. It was Reagan's
America now, and the psychedelic Revolution had been abandoned for
the power trip of cocaine in the stock market. The
same man I had co founded the Youth International Party with, indeed,
the same man I had vouched for on the stand
in the trial of the Chicago Seven, had become a
(29:22):
businessman a suit. The yippies had become yuppies, and I well.
I unfortunately realized that I was no longer a major
threat to the system, but something much worse, a minor celebrity.
Grandpa hippie babbling about drugs, love and the Revolution. I
(29:45):
learned playing the clown was worse than playing the guru. Still,
my infamy kept me high and off the streets. The
most dangerous man in America had retired into irrelevance. My
(30:07):
whole life has been about escaping, but not just my life.
I mean I mapped the human psyche and then discovered
how to go beyond it, to transcend, to explore, to escape.
You know, it was my father who gave me my
first lesson in escaping. Yeah, when he split the scene
(30:31):
when I was just a kid. He died drunk and
broken alone. My mother was determined that I would be
a better man than him, all the while never forgiving
me for being his son. Maybe that pain is what
drove me to understand people, the mechanics of the lack
(30:56):
of intimacy. Maybe that, in turn drove me to achieve
the success my mother believed beyond me. You see that
that's what I was trying to spare Marianne and the kids.
I wasn't going to leave her and the children the
way that my father left me and my mother. I
(31:16):
was determined to work it out to reach the next
level do you know if she got impatient. That's not
my fault, right, that's not my fault. I could have
fixed what was broken in her in us, but she
never gave me the chance. She gave up, she ran away.
I'm not the Okay. Yeah, looks like California out there. Huh.
(31:45):
So I guess it could be either heaven or hell.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Yeah, I'm not a fan of California either. I'm not
a fan of a dry heat anyway.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
You know, I haven't decided yet if this is real, yeah,
or just the last flicker of my dying mind.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Yeah, Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6 (32:08):
Yeah, I guess not. No, I did it. I escaped
(32:31):
them all, all the spooks and the pigs in their prisons.
I escaped life. But I guess I can't escape death.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Uh As in life, I step into death a man
liberated from all.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
Wait, what is that? Mary am Mary Anne? No, No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
No, no, Ferryman, you can't leave me here, Ferryman, Please,
you can't be real.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
You can't leave me here.
Speaker 8 (33:24):
You can't you can't here. You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
No.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
No, even gurus of their inner demons, no matter how
(34:06):
far out into the corners of consciousness, you get you
are still there.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
The you that is most you of guilty conscious.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Cannot travel unencumbered, as this great teacher of men shall
learn on his passage.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Fairman. This episode
features Martin Starr as Timothy Leary. Written by Rob Mosca
with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski. Our
executive of producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
(35:08):
Music by Ben Lovitt, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
design by Dan Bush. Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Jan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising
producer is Josh Than. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski.
Produced by Dan Bush. The passages of production of iHeartRadio
(35:31):
and Cycopia Pictures
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