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Psychedelics Today: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Psychedelics Today
Covering up-to-the-minute developments and diving deep into crucial topics bridging the scientific, academic, philosophical, societal, and cultural, Psychedelics Today is leading the discussion in this rapidly evolving ecosystem.
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- 1 weeks ago1h 8m
PT 662 - Jordan Kronick - PEAKING
Joe sits down with Jordan Kronick, the director, writer, and producer of Peaking: Psychedelics and the Pursuit of Happiness, a new documentary now rolling out in theaters city by city. The film covers six substances (psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, ibogaine, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT from the toad) and puts cameras inside the dosing room. Viewers follow first-time users before, during, and after their experiences. Jordan's path into this work goes back to 2003, when he produced Ecstasy Rising for Peter Jennings at ABC News. That primetime documentary challenged the government's "holes in your brain" campaign, and the scientist behind the flawed study retracted it before the film aired. Rick Doblin credits that moment with helping open the door to MAPS' first MDMA for PTSD research. Joe and Jordan talk about brain injury in pro sports, including Daniel Carcillo's story and a planned Johns Hopkins study on concussions. They cover the film's "big tent" approach and how Jordan found subjects through Heroic Hearts Project and Beond in Cancun. Joe raises his concerns about toad sustainability and safety. From there they get into the drug war's echoes from the 1960s to the 1980s, the Starck Club in Dallas, and Michael Clegg, the man credited with naming ecstasy. They close on today's bipartisan support for psychedelics, the road to FDA approval for Compass Pathways and Lykos, and the strange prospect of psychedelics becoming federally legal before cannabis. About Jordan Kronick Jordan Kronick is a documentary filmmaker who began his career at ABC News as a producer for Peter Jennings Reporting, where he made Ecstasy Rising (2004). He later worked at HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, reporting on psychedelics in sports in 2020. Peaking premiered in June 2026 at Dances With Films at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. In this episode Making a six-substance documentary in 19 months, from March 2024 to October 2025 How Ecstasy Rising debunked the MDMA neurotoxicity campaign Psychedelics, concussions, and CTE in the NHL, NFL, and MMA Daniel Carcillo and a planned Johns Hopkins study on brain repair Following veterans to the Amazon with Heroic Hearts Project Ibogaine for opioid addiction at Beond in Cancun Toad in the California desert, plus Joe's caution on sustainability and the myth of ancestral use Clinical versus experiential approaches to psychedelic work How the 1980s MDMA crackdown mirrored the 1960s The Starck Club, Michael Clegg, and why ecstasy spread so fast Rick Perry, veterans, and bipartisan support for ibogaine Compass Pathways, Lykos, patents, and what FDA approval would and wouldn't legalize Psychedelics leapfrogging cannabis Chapters 00:00 Intro 04:15 Meet Jordan Kronick and Peaking 05:38 From the LA premiere to a city by city theatrical release 08:39 Ecstasy Rising and the "holes in your brain" campaign 13:01 Following the renaissance, and psychedelics in sports at HBO 19:33 Can psychedelics repair the brain? 22:19 Designing a "big tent" film 26:05 Witnessing transformation in the dosing room 28:10 Finding the subjects 32:47 Toad: wild edges and real concerns 38:46 Access in Oregon and Colorado 41:12 The drug war, 1960s and 1980s 47:58 Rick Doblin's role 49:30 Archival footage and early research 51:08 Michael Clegg, Texas, and the Starck Club 56:30 Bipartisan support and ibogaine in Texas 58:16 What's next with the FDA 1:02:36 Psychedelics before cannabis? 1:04:40 Where to see Peaking
- 3 weeks ago1h 15m
PT 661 - Kenneth Tupper, PhD: Harm Reduction, Drug Education, Canadian Ayahuasca, and Psychedelic Public Health
Kenneth Tupper has spent decades working at the intersection of drug policy, public health, harm reduction, education, and psychedelics. In this episode, Joe Moore talks with Tupper about his early work with DanceSafe and drug checking, British Columbia's overdose crisis and experiment with decriminalization, and what the psychedelic field can learn from decades of harm reduction work and research. They also dig into Tupper's academic work on psychedelics and education, the idea of entheogens as "plant teachers," ayahuasca policy in Canada, problems with conventional drug education, and the limits of treating psychedelics exclusively as medicines. The conversation eventually widens into a bigger question: What does it actually mean to educate people well about drugs, altered states, and consciousness? Enjoy the show. Disclaimer: Intro and promotional audio in this episode were generated using synthetic voice technology. The interview itself is unaltered. Show Notes (Machine Generated) Kenneth Tupper's career has followed two parallel tracks: psychedelic scholarship and public health. Long before the current psychedelic resurgence, he was studying the idea of entheogens as tools for learning and examining how Indigenous traditions understand plants such as ayahuasca, peyote, and psilocybin as teachers. At the same time, work with DanceSafe and early pill testing drew him into harm reduction and eventually into more than two decades of public-health and drug-policy work in British Columbia. Tupper and Joe revisit the early history of drug checking and the logic behind harm reduction: if people are going to use drugs, providing accurate information and reducing preventable risks can save lives. That discussion leads into supervised consumption sites, pharmaceutical alternatives to illicit opioids, fentanyl, the toxic drug supply, naloxone, and the difficult reality of people surviving overdoses while sustaining hypoxic or anoxic brain injuries. They also examine British Columbia's experiment with drug decriminalization. Tupper describes the limits of decriminalizing possession without simultaneously addressing housing, healthcare, treatment options, the illicit supply, and other social conditions. The conversation contrasts British Columbia with Portugal and explores why drug policy interventions cannot easily be transplanted from one social and historical context into another. From there, the discussion turns directly toward psychedelics. Tupper argues that psychedelic public health should involve more than clinical treatment. Psychedelics may have roles in health promotion, community building, education, rites of passage, and helping people who are not necessarily diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. At the same time, wider access creates a need for better harm-reduction information, screening, preparation, and attention to set, setting, and the larger social environment in which psychedelic experiences occur. Drug education becomes one of the central themes of the episode. Tupper compares the history of drug education with sex education and argues that drug education has remained unusually tied to prescribed behavioral outcomes—particularly abstinence. Rather than simply telling young people what not to do, he asks what genuine education about drugs might look like when curiosity, experimentation, risk, pleasure, and real-world access are acknowledged. That question connects back to Tupper's longstanding work on what he calls entheogenic education. Drawing on educational thinkers including John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, he discusses psychedelics as potential "cognitive tools" and considers how experiential education might offer models beyond conventional schooling. Joe and Tupper also discuss how AI may force an even deeper reconsideration of education when reading, writing, calculation, and information retrieval can increasingly be outsourced to machines. The final part of the conversation focuses heavily on ayahuasca. Tupper discusses his doctoral r
- Aug 12, 20261h 12m
PT 660 - Josh Lipson & Roman Palitsky: Psychedelic Harms and the Post-Psychedelic Challenges Study
This is an important discussion about harms, and what we should be doing about them. Josh and Roman are working on a major study at Emory University to answer some of the basic and outstanding questions we have about psychedelic risks and cases that can be challenging to recover from. We have a lot of work to do characterizing these experiences, and developing appropriate treatments for helping people bounce back more quickly.
- Aug 5, 20261h 20m
PT 659 - Megan Bowers & Mikayla Hellwich
This is a special episode featuring two of our favorite organizations. DanceSafe and Shulgin Foundation. Listen to Joe Moore record with the heads of these orgs and learn about how you may be able to buy some art to support them. This is a singularly important history and partnership.
- Jul 31, 20261h 15m
PT - 658 - Mareesa Stertz – Sphinx Gate Beyond Burning Man: Psychedelic Healing Without Psychedelics
My friend Mareesa joins us again on PT to discuss art, integration, psychedelic experiences without drugs, the heros journey and her smaller sphinxes that may start touring the country! Enjoy! Here are some machine generated shownotes if you find them useful! Show Notes Sphinx Gate began as a pair of monumental 34-foot sculptures at Burning Man. Now, Mareesa Stertz and her collaborators are developing smaller, portable versions that could bring the experience to festivals, conferences, and communities around the country. The installation is designed as a sober rite of passage—one that draws on psychedelic experience without requiring anyone to take a drug. Participants move through four portals centered on the mind, body, heart, and destiny. Along the way, they are invited to identify a recurring personal story, notice how it lives in the body, meet it with greater compassion, and consider what might exist beyond it. Mareesa and Joe explore how the project draws from the Hero's Journey, Carl Jung's concept of individuation, participatory art, ritual, somatic awareness, and the riddles traditionally associated with the sphinx. They also discuss the importance of community in psychedelic integration, the stories and inherited beliefs that disrupt self-trust, and why healing is rarely the result of one dramatic experience. The conversation expands into peer support, the Global Psychedelic Society, the risks of presenting psychedelics as a quick fix, and the challenge of remaining fully human as artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in everyday life.
- Jul 23, 20261h 18m
PT 657 - Rachel Turetzky PhD & Douglas S. Wingate DTCM: The Eight-Circuit Model, Metaprogramming, and Psychedelic Therapy
Kyle and Joe interview Rachel Turetzky & Douglas S. Wingate about their perspectives on the Wilson\Leary 8 Circuit Model of consciousness. They recently released a CE approved program on Psychedelic Education Center to train therapists on this model and how to integrate the 8 Circuit Model into your clinical therapy practice. In this episode: Maybe Day and maybe logic: Honoring Robert Anton Wilson and learning to hold beliefs, models, and interpretations more lightly Reality tunnels: How biology, experience, culture, and conditioning filter our perception of reality Robert Anton Wilson's legacy: Guerrilla ontology, stand-up philosophy, Prometheus Rising, and using humor to destabilize rigid beliefs Timothy Leary beyond the caricature: His early work in psychology, the development of the Eight-Circuit Model, and the parts of his intellectual legacy that are often overlooked The first four circuits: Bodily safety, emotional territory, language and symbolic thinking, and social and relational conditioning The upper circuits: Sensory and somatic intelligence, metacognition, archetypal and transpersonal experience, and unitive states of consciousness Metaprogramming: Identifying the beliefs, imprints, and automatic patterns shaping our lives—and developing the capacity to revise them Circuit Zero and Stanislav Grof: Prenatal and perinatal experience, the basic perinatal matrices, and the lasting influence of early development Normalizing unusual experiences: Archetypal encounters, ancestral material, entities, out-of-body experiences, synchronicities, and other phenomena that conventional psychology may struggle to interpret Psychedelics and re-imprinting: How expanded states may loosen entrenched developmental patterns and create opportunities for psychological change Pleasure as therapeutic material: Anhedonia, chronic survival states, the "hedonic intelligence" of Circuit Five, and learning to experience joy without treating it as a distraction from the work Clinical applications: Using the model during psychedelic preparation to identify intentions, developmental imprints, and material that may emerge Medicine and dosage selection: How MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT may produce different experiences depending on the intention and dose Integration and verticality: Grounding expansive, archetypal, or unitive experiences through the body, emotions, relationships, and everyday life Chapel Perilous: Understanding destabilizing experiences, ontological shock, spiritual emergencies, and the process of reconstructing meaning afterward Beyond psychedelics: Connections with yoga, meditation, occult practice, Chinese medicine, chakra systems, and other psychospiritual traditions The new course: The structure of The Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness: An Integrative Framework for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, including its 14 lessons, practical exercises, assessments, certification, and continuing-education options
- May 11, 20261h 43m
PT 656 - Travis Tyler Fluck: Denver Mushroom Decriminalization, Mutual Aid, and the Future of Psychedelic Culture
Denver mushroom decriminalization changed the national conversation around psilocybin access, personal use, and grassroots psychedelic reform. In this episode of Psychedelics Today, Joe Moore speaks with Travis Tyler Fluck, an autognostic mycologist, educator, activist, end-of-life doula, and longtime Colorado mushroom community organizer. Fluck was involved in Denver's 2019 psilocybin campaign, which made adult personal use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms the city's lowest law enforcement priority. The campaign passed by a narrow margin and helped open the door for later reforms in Oakland, Washington, D.C., Oregon, Colorado, and beyond. This conversation looks at the people, ethics, and tensions behind Denver mushroom decriminalization. It also explores what happens after a law changes: how communities educate themselves, how personal use spaces develop, and how grassroots access fits alongside regulated psychedelic services.
- May 8, 202654 min
PT 655 - Martha Hammel and Tasia Poinsatte - Aspen Psychedelic Symposium
Aspen Psychedelic Symposium is the focus of this conversation with Martha Hammel of the Aspen Psychedelic Resource Center and Tasia Poinsatte of Healing Advocacy Fund. They join Joe Moore to discuss this year's symposium, how it fits into Colorado's evolving natural medicine landscape, and why Aspen has become a strong setting for serious public conversations about psychedelics. Hammel explains that the symposium is now in its third year and is designed to bring major psychedelic voices to Colorado's West Slope. She also outlines the local roots of the Aspen Psychedelic Resource Center, which grew out of education and outreach work around decriminalization and the Natural Medicine Health Act. Poinsatte describes Healing Advocacy Fund's broader role across Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, where the group works on safe access, implementation, affordability, and public education.
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