Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 770: Klea McKenna

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

Klea McKenna, Terence McKenna's brilliant daughter, joins the DTFH!Subscribe to Terence McKenna's Blue Streak, available everywhere, including Spotify and YouTube!If you want to learn more about how Klea is preserving and getting her father's message out to new generations, check her out on Instagram!Michigan family! Duncan is coming to Mic Drop Comedy in Detroit, October 23-25. Come on out! Click here to get your tickets now.This episode is brought to you by: Go to Quince.com/duncan for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! Visit Amentara.com/go/DTFH and use code DUNCAN11 at checkout for 11% Off! Start low. Pay attention. It’s one of those things you dial in for yourself. Download Cash App, use our exclusive referral code SECURE10 in your profile, send $5 to a friend within 14 days, and you’ll get $10 dropped right into your account! Terms apply. That’s Money. That’s Cash App.

Hello and welcome to the Dunkett Russell Family Hour podcast. Before we get going with this incredible episode, historic episode, dare I say. I want to invite you to come see me at Mike Drop Comedy in Detroit. I'm going to be there the 23rd of October through the 25th of October. Get those tickets in advance. I want to see you in Detroit. And if you want to want to be. add-free episodes of the DTFH, all you've got to do is subscribe at YouTube or on patreon.com

for it slash DTFH. Friends, we have a banger of an episode for you today. Clea McKenna is here with us today. Clea is Terrence McKenna's daughter. Of course, Terrence McKenna is the psychedelic philosopher whose writings and lectures have informed a great deal of my worldview, and I'm assuming the worldview of millions and millions of people. He was a brilliant author and he has a brilliant daughter. In this episode, Clea talks about her family's legacy, her father's influence on psychedelic culture,

what it was like growing up with Terrence McKenna as a father and her current project, reviving and reinterpreting his work for a new generation. Also, she's plugging her new podcast, Terrence McKinna's Blue Streak, which you're going to be able to find on Specter, vision. All the links you need to find it will be down below. And this podcast is going to feature never before her lectures and all kinds of content from the Terrence McKenna archives. This was a wonderful conversation with a wonderful person. So make sure that you follow Clea on Instagram, subscribe to Terrence McKinna's Blue Streak, and enjoy this episode of the DTFH with Clea McKenna.

Leah, welcome to the DTFH. It's great to meet you. You too. Thanks for having me. I mean, we might as well just start off with what you've been up to. Can you talk about Lux Natura? What is this? Yeah. So, Lux Natura is a little tiny company that my parents founded in 1976. My parents are Terence McKenna and Kathleen Harrison. Terence McKenna, the late psychedelic philosopher and Kathleen Harrison, a somewhat renowned ethnobotanist. And they started Lux Natura back in 1976 initially to sell psilocybin spore prints via mail order.

That was its first iteration. And then also kind of just as like an umbrella for their various projects, small press publishing. It published the 1985 edition of the Magic Mushroom Growers Guide, which was kind of of the first like how to grow your own mushrooms at home sort of book. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then over the years, it just became a kind of clearing house for my dad's work. It sold his cassette tapes through the 80s and 90s. It went dormant for a while after his death and then became a partnership of my mom, my brother,

and I, and basically is there to steward my dad's legacy. And I kind of stepped in in late 2024. And I had spent about 25 years avoiding this part of my identity. Yeah. And actively, you know, choosing to kind of like have a whole different life than the one that I had been brought up in. I'm an artist and I had kind of found my people in the arts community. And but it was time. And I knew that this was coming.

I always kind of knew I would have to take on this role eventually. So I stepped in, I revived Lux Natura, and now we are building an archive of my dad's original work and life story, a physical and digital archive. So that's like the big project we're working on currently. And then we're using that archival material to create new publications, new releases, the first of which is a podcast that's coming in about three weeks. Wow. Cool. That's cool. I got to ask, why actively, why we're going to be?

are you actively avoiding stepping into this role? I mean, my dad died when I was 19 and so kind of, you know, right on the cusp of adulthood. Yeah. And I had had as one, as you can imagine, given the subculture I come from, I had had a rather messy upbringing, particularly my teen years. And I was just ready to like walk away from all of that at that point. And then, you know, I'm an artist. I wanted to find my own voice and I wanted my voice to be distinct from his and not have my identity be informed by people's predetermined idea of, you know, who I was because of my family. So just to be clear, I never walked away from psychedelics or from my family. I just kind of chose not to participate in like the psychedelic scene publicly.

Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, it wasn't for for me and God, knows how many people we would stumble upon your father's work usually in high school we were the outsiders who had who had found LSD or psychedelics who were in the midst of the um i think what your dad called the pharmacological inquisition the we were in the midst of the war on drugs we had been just just hammered with propaganda this is going to drive you insane this is going to ruin your life this is killing brain cells you then you stumble upon the archaic revival or something. And you're suddenly reading this take on it, which is like, actually, this has been a sacrament

that has been used by humans since forever. And it's not destroying your mind. And so you would feel like you'd found some kind of forbidden tome when you're reading. And not just that, but you would feel like you were tripping because of his ability to articulate whatever that space is. in writing. And so it was unique. But for you, you were born into this. There wasn't a prodigal son moment of running into psychedelics. You were born into psychedelics. So that I get it. You were born into the underground. Every young person has to, you know, young people have to

individuate, right? That's like part of becoming an adult. And so, you know, there are certainly some young people who I grew up with in the kind of psychedelic underground who went way further away from it than I did and became, you know, square accountants who live in the Midwest. I didn't quite take it that far, but I did kind of step away and just kind of try to figure out, well, what are my own values independently, you know, what do I care about and everything? And, you know, went to school, got a master's degree, had two kids, like life happened. I never planned to wait this long to turn my attention towards this, but time just kind of got away from me. 25 years passed.

Yeah. Oh, God, when you have kids, it's just, it's incredible, you know, to experience that. And, you know, the, it feels like your, your dad was something of arguably a profit. Like, when now these days, I'll go back and read some of his work or, or, or, watch a lecture. And he, it's really, he was so on the beam regarding what was coming. Like here we are experiencing this collision of technologies, artificial intelligence companies are almost gleefully proclaiming this technology might destroy humanity. And we, in the, I remember him writing about the sort of compression of time between what you can imagine and that thing coming into the world.

And we're seeing that happening with artificial intelligence. So the expedite, it's expediting your ability to make things for better or for worse. And I have kids. I have four kids. And when I look into the future now, yeah, well, after, I'm telling you, between two and four is the same. You can only get to a certain level of chaos. Yeah, I think you get maximum chaos and then that's where you are. So two is maximum chaos.

But I'm so sorry for the long. Yeah, exactly. But did he, do you feel like he tried to prepare you in some way for this moment that's happening? You would write about the singularity. You would talk about this. No, no, no, he didn't. No. Okay.

Can we talk about that? Well, my parents were, you know, big on values and ideologies. I mean, he hates that word ideology, but, you know, they were pushing their own ideology. They were not, there was not a lot of, like, practical instructions for life going on, you know, that kind of parenting. So, no, I was relatively unprepared. You mean parenting? You mean parenting? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, just like the preparation, I mean, who knows? Maybe they were in the sense that they were not preparing us for a life in the society we knew. You know, I've managed to become an adult who, you know, it's paying my taxes. It's like a traumatic process every year because I just like navigating. Don't get me started. Bureaucracy is not my strong suit. So maybe in a sense they were preparing us for some. other kind of life that they thought was coming, but maybe it didn't come fast enough,

you know? And we ended up in this limbo zone we're in where we have all these ideas about the future and about different ways we could live or how to adapt to technology and whatnot, but we don't, but then we still have to like go to our jobs, you know, and pay the bills. Yeah. So, yeah, no, preparation wasn't a big part of it. But they- Was it imbalanced? Hmm? Was it what? Was he imbalanced?

Was it? Was he imbalanced in the sense that you, when you go into the psychedelic realm, it's an easy thing to disregard the material, the realm of credit card numbers, social security numbers, bureaucracy, and the householder life and everything, because you've been granted this vision of something. transcendent reality that seems to be untouched, unscathed by this bleary, whatever the fuck we find ourselves stuck in. And an imbalance can emerge there. Yeah, I think an imbalance, I haven't used

that word for it, but I think also a, in a way, a competition between your inner life and your outer life. Like, and I'm actually, this is something that has like given me some, a lot of sympathy for my parents now, because for people like that. And it turns out people like me also who have like a really rich inner life, whether that's as an artist or a writer or a philosopher or whatever, but where your inner life is really rich. And a lot of times, like, more engaging and more interesting than the outer world, you know, than like the world of day-to-day functioning. It creates a kind of constant competition between what's going on inside your mind and your real world responsibilities. and as a parent, that's really tough. And I didn't quite understand that when I was a kid.

I felt it, but I didn't understand why exactly. And now as a parent who's also an artist, I totally get it. And so I'm a lot more sympathetic to them about that. Yeah. Yeah. But they certainly indoctrinated us into ideas of animism. I mean, that was really, you know, and in addition to like whatever their ideas were,

We also just grew up in unlikely situations. So, you know, we lived for some years in my early childhood. We lived in Hawaii off the grid, no electricity, no, you know, telephone or anything. And so we grew up really close to nature. And then we also were exposed to indigenous cultures because we traveled to Central America a lot with them. And so we were exposed to kind of, you know, just these traditions of animism where that's just kind of built into daily life. And so that part, I think, really shaped my understanding of nature and shaped my artwork a lot as well. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Quince. You know,

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Thank you, Quince. Wow, yeah, wow, off the grid. That's, were you, how, were you aware of, of how anomalous your childhood was? Like, I guess you couldn't be, but... Yeah, I mean, I think kids are... Kids just take what comes, you know? It's like, that's just their whole world.

They don't really have anything to compare it to. And then the other thing is that, like, we weren't the only ones living like that. Like, we were part of a community. And, you know, I knew lots of kids who grew up on communes. And, you know, it wasn't weird within the subset we were in, kind of. It wasn't really until...

Right. I left home and went out. out into the broader world and went to college that I understood like, oh, yes, this was not how everyone was doing it. I mean, I knew that, but I didn't really like feel what that meant, you know? But yeah. Yeah. Like the first, the first time we had a TV was when I was in college. So, but you know.

Wow. Wow. That's so fascinating. That's so fascinating because he was so in the tech. You know, he was so, he was so good at like, pointing towards this, you know, technological singularity or this moment, you know, that he was a, he was a, he was a, it was a, it was an eschatological prophet of psychedelics and yet no, no TV, no. Well, we had a computer. We had a, we had, as soon as the like, I don't even know what it was, but the kind with the giant green print, you know, that you're like. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. or whatever. We had that once we moved back to California from Hawaii. But you also have to remember, I wasn't just raised by my dad. I was raised by my mom too. And like my mom, you know,

in terms of those kind of choices about how the household is run, whether we have TV or not, like, I suspect my mom had a very big say. So it's both of their input. Okay. Yeah. Of course. But also, you know, he had this mentality, sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. He had this No, please. I'm sorry to cut you up. TV were for the masses. Things like TV weren't for us. They were for other people, you know, which was this kind of elitist alienation, you know. And we were, that idea was taught to us.

And I actually feel like that's not a great thing to teach your kids. And that like that's something I had to do a lot of undoing to feel not alienated from the general public and yeah not judgmental of those choices well god you know what is it's interesting like there's names for gin pop there every you know religion has a name for gin pop you know like uh the harry christna is called gin pop the mayavadis you know i think children of illusion and the um god what i guess in judeas and what it's the goyam and what it's the goyam and And then in, it goes on and on every, there's, there's all, there's all kinds of names for the, for the masses.

And it's just interesting to hear that he also had that conceptualization of a kind of like, you know, the, the majority of people are sort of brainwashed, right? That's the idea. They're sort of brainwashed or just sleep, sleepwalking. And, you don't want to eat the same things they're eating. eating or take in the same stuff they're taking in or it could poison you too. So he's protecting you from becoming one of them. It is a very elitist view.

It is. Yes, it is. I think that, you know, he had this kind of extreme sense of the worst thing was to be mediocre, you know, that like you could be a disaster or you could be a, whatever, you know, I don't know, something amazing. But the worst thing would be to just be mediocre. And he used to say, mediocrity is death. Oh, my God.

That's hardcore, man. I remember a moment, I've written about this, actually, but I remember a moment where we were, because, you know, the thing you have to picture that's kind of amusing now is like him with all his ideas and whatnot, but then him having to function as just like a parent. and doing normal stuff. So we were at a birthday party at Chucky Cheese, and he was there with us.

And then as we were leaving the party, and, you know, it's just like screaming kids and candy and waitresses serving fries and whatnot. He just turned around at the doorway and yelled into the Chucky Cheese, mediocrity is death. And then we left. So, you know. What father has? He doesn't want it to do that. What father hasn't wanted to yell?

Any parent who goes into Chuck Echise wants to scream into the void. Like it's a basic response. He just couldn't hold it back. Exactly. What was your, I, this is a, this is something that I really am dreading. The older my kids get, and I'm not sure how to handle it. Before I had kids, I thought I knew. But now my kid, he picked, he pulled out a book I have.

It's his comic book on, LSD on Hoffman. It's really cool. But, you know, he can read now, obviously, and he looks at the book. And he's like LSD. He's like, Dad, what is that? Why are the colors like that on the front of the book? Because it's like this psychedelic comic book. And I paused for a moment because, you know, in my life, LSD is potentially one of the greatest things I ever encountered other than my kids, other than my, you know, household or life. And, and I'll I just was like, it's a medicine, Forrest. It's a medicine. And I didn't know what to say. But I'm just curious. How did he articulate psychedelics to you as his child? And when was your first experience with psychedelics?

I'm assuming mushroom. I mean, they were selling spores. Mushrooms must have just been part of your life, right? They were accessible in the pantry. Yeah, well, they were careful about how they stored things. You know, you have to label everything really clearly. But yeah, their policy was just to tell us the truth. And that's my policy with my kids too.

And yeah, I mean, you know, you have to do that in a way that's like age appropriate and whatnot. But even growing up in the counterculture, there were still families, friends of ours, you know, who the parents didn't tell them. the kids, everything. And so then when we'd be over at their house, the parents would do like, oh, like, let's go for a walk, you know, after dinner or whatever so that they could go smoke a joint or whatever. And we, as though the kids didn't know that was happening. And my brother and I would have to kind of like play along, even though, of course, we knew. But I always found this very odd and very hollow, you know, like the kids know. Kids know what's happening. They know a lot.

Right. And if they don't hear it from you, they're going to hear it from someone else. So I absolutely, I just, yeah, and I tell kids the truth as much as I can in a way that's as age appropriate as possible while still being true. Yeah. And in terms of like, you know, we were around psychedelics. They weren't giving them to us when we were small children, but we were growing mushrooms. And so we knew how to do that.

We knew how to, you know, it was like gardening. And we were, you know, it was like gardening. were, you know, in ayahuasca ceremonies where all the grownups were taking it. And me and my brother were just like there in our sleeping bags, chilling, you know. Wow. Yeah. So it was a grad, you know, because of that, because of being open about it, there was never a moment where it was like, here's the deal, you know.

Right. It was just kind of like a gradual flow because that was our context. Right. They were very clear, though, about, you know, what people now. alcohol set and setting that was very much taught to us even as adolescence. And just kind of like unaware, both judgment about which drugs are okay and which ones are not. Very clear boundaries on that. It was not just like a free for all.

And also about considering who is it safe to use drugs around what kind of setting, that kind of stuff. You know, so there was some education happening. That's cool. Yeah, so it sounds like it was, you know, probably like a hyper-conservative, puritanical, evangelical family would hear what you just said and be like, you were raised by the devil. But to me, it sounds like a very, it sounds like a very, it sounds like a responsible. It sounds like your parent, like I've heard stories of like Tim Leary,

you know, giving his children LSD at very young ages. And that's always bothered to have. But once we were like adolescence, not when we were like small children. One time my dad accidentally, I was with my dad and we were at some like conference, the retreats center place where he was teaching. And after dinner, a woman was like, magic brownies and gave them around to everyone. And I just ate them because they were brownies. I was like 11 maybe.

And he was not tuned in to enough to realize this was happening. He just, you know, was talking with people and whatnot. and that was an interesting evening yeah 11 11 now was that was there were those was it weed brownies or mushroom brownies what kind of what was the magic in the brownies i think it was just weed so i don't think it was too bad but you know eating it sometimes can be so much more potent than smoking it and oh my god my mom was an 11 you know this was they they were split up and so this was the kind of thing my dad was like the most of my dad was like the His main concern was like, don't tell your mom, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that, yeah, that, you know, I do feel like that one of the many horrible repercussions of the war on drugs is that the prohibition on studying these things has sort of created a deficit when it comes to understanding what it's doing to the developing brain. you know and and I've heard the brain doesn't stop developing until 25, 26. Yeah. And this is my speech. I'm preparing for them as like, listen,

it's one of God's gifts to the world. But your brain is developing right now. And wouldn't it be better to wait for the, you know, that to happen before, you know, we meddle around with what's going on there. I don't know about you,

but like from time to time I experience depression. I have like all kinds of, neurotic aspects to myself and I'll never know is this just my own genetics and brain chemistry or is this because I spent most of my you know high school years taking LSD whenever I possibly whenever I could yeah I'll never know I know and did you have neurotic I don't think that's my I really know I thank you I'll send you a check yeah I mean you're Your think is very reasonable as a parent to be like, yeah, wait until you're 25.

But it's reasonable from your perspective of like their brain development, but it's not reasonable culturally. Your kids are not going to wait until they're 25 to do drugs. Sorry. You know, and so my feeling is like to get ahead of whatever's going to happen anyways and guide them. I mean, I would, I think the set and setting thing is for teenagers is so important. You know, like, sure, you can do that. them at our house, maybe, you know, or like, I don't know, but not, yeah, I think that's more crucial and more, a more realistic boundary than just saying, don't do it at all. But I don't

know. I haven't, my oldest kids just turned 12. So I'm not yet, I'm not yet quite there, you know. We'll see what I say in five years. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, this, this is, this is I think one of one of the services that your your father did for the world is he he really destigmatized these things and when he and I think people these days are so used you know psychedelics are or it's it's so much less prohibited it's not the underground as much anymore we've got I mean I that at one point I bought like $50 worth of stock in a company that makes pharmaceutical LSD for some kind of study just because I thought it was funny to buy shares of LSD when it used to be a five-year mandatory minimum just for having it

in your pocket. And your father was really on the front lines of that battle. And so, and what you're saying, it's cool. I think it's, it is reasonable what you're saying is because this is something so many parents, I feel like, are illiterate when it, when it comes to talking. to children. Forget the birds and the bees. What about the mushrooms and what about the DMTs? Like, how do we talk to our kids about that? You know, and this is something that your father did. And you know, but you know what I'm picking up a little bit? It does, and maybe I'm completely off here. But it feels like there's a part of you that we all fantasize about, like I fantasize. What if my father was a professor of literature and wasn't, didn't have PTSD from Vietnam, you know, but I get that.

Do you have a sense of like, you know, it was cool. It was an interesting childhood, but it sounds like, I don't know, like, yeah, I mean, just to be clear. Maybe you feel like it was a little bumpy. Yeah, it was a little bumpy. I have great respect for my dad's ideas and my dad's work and his. mind, he was not a great dad and he was definitely not a great partner to my mom. But I think, you know, in the context of who he was outside of that, like look at history, at art history or the history of literature, show me a brilliant mind who made brilliant work and also was a brilliant

father and husband. Like, it doesn't really exist. It is very rare for someone to be all those things simultaneously. And so, you know, that might have something to do with why it took me 25 years to do this is I had to get enough distance from my own childhood, my own upbringing, and learn how to be a parent myself, you know, and then come back to it with some perspective and some, you know, grace and sympathy and be able to see his work for what it is rather than seeing it as like in meshed with the kind of home life we have. Yeah, but no, I mean, that was messy. And to be clear, like, no amount of awareness about psychedelics

and the way that they can raise your consciousness and all of that can untangle them from the culture of the underground, which was beautiful in a lot of ways, but it also was, you know, drug dealers and trafficking and all kinds of shit going on. And so that kind of darker underbelly of the 1980s was very present in my youth and that of all the people I grew up with. And, you know, I think it was kind of the shadow of the, like, the way I see it is there was this idealism in the 60s of our parents' generation. And that lasted into the 70s. And then it started to turn. And by the 80s, you were really like living in the shadow of the 1960s.

and this kind of, you know, people were getting busted and going to prison. People had become addicts. There was a lot of abuse on communes. There was like, you know, a lot of dark stuff going on. And so I was aware of that even as a kid. The part of my childhood that was dreamy and that I think is the magic part, was my very early childhood when we were living very close to nature. There was a few years in Hawaii.

there was a few years in rural Northern California. And that part, you know, my parents were filled with this kind of ambition and hopefulness and idealism about how their ideas could change the world. And we were living close to nature. So I was getting to live that kind of, you know, the kind of animism that he talks about in archaic revival. I was getting to like experience that, not just as ideas, but as lived experience. And that was a magical time.

And so I try to reach back kind of to those roots and pull from what it, from it, what I can and give that to my kids. But definitely from about age 10 on, it was a mess. So, yeah. Look, I don't want to like, I don't want to dig up anything you don't want to dig up about your dad. I am curious, what do you mean a mess? But we don't have to talk about the mess if you don't want to because I have lots of other. It wasn't just about my dad. It was also just about, you know, I lived in rural Northern California in an economically

depressed area with, in a subculture of, it was very heavy on drugs. Some of those drugs were, you know, drugs we like, and some of them were drugs that create, you know, addiction and abuse and whatnot. Yeah. And my parents split up when I was 10, and so then there was a very nasty divorce. You know, I, both my brother and I got into a lot of trouble. teenagers of various sorts like you know just I mean nothing nothing nothing nothing outlandish just like a messy you know and we were pretty broke all through my teen years too we

we had a single mom and um we worked jobs and you know it was just like rural American upbringing it wasn't got it wasn't the magic that people picture during that i got you no i got you i got you it was a come to jesus it was like a you know it is it is idealism like you got to you have you come down this is the problem romdas talked about this the problem for romdas the problem was not the getting high the problem was the coming down you know and this is just the reality of the situation or like famously the the question that emerged when alpert was living with tim leary was who does the dishes here who does the dishes somebody's got to do the dishes and and and that that that is to me the one of the the Achilles heel in the psychedelic

world is in the I think we're still wrestling with that is is who does the fucking dishes and someone's got to raise the Achilles heel of the hippie movement and all of that because I mean the way that sexism and and um you know gender roles continued, even though they were so radical and they were so idealistic, but like, who was doing the dishes on the communes? Like, the women were. That's who. You know, and so, like, no matter how idealistic they got, they still didn't manage to tackle these kind of really core human issues about how do you do daily life, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I was just, I just heard a clip of my dad, because, you know, I'm editing, we're editing this podcast, and so I'm listening to a

of his talks and sifting for certain themes to organize these thematic episodes and whatnot. And I just heard a talk where he was saying like, what do you do in your, you know, there's your up life and then there's your down life. And in your, how do you make your down life as psychedelic as possible even when you're down? How do you still live a psychedelic life, kind of? And his, his answer to that was, um, was you, um, was you, make art as much as possible. You listen to music. You read books.

You dance. You know, you do things that are, what I understood it to mean was like you do things that are tapping into your own individual human creativity, but that also are generating, like, lived experience that you can feel, you know, sensory experience and that kind of thing. Yeah, that's beautiful. really at odds with the, you know, yes, he was into like futurism and technology and stuff also, but I think that idea that I just said is really at odds with the idea of living a screen-based life, right? Where everything you're experiencing is not actually like sensory experience in the same way.

But I think, you know, he didn't, he wasn't alive by the time that became our reality. So we don't really know his take on that. As long as we're having a conversation with Terence McKenna's daughter, we might as well talk about mushrooms, a specific mushroom, one that is baked so deeply into human mythology that I genuinely think our ancestors were trying to leave us a message, and we just completely missed it for like a thousand years. Most people's nervous systems are running on fumes, anxious, underslept, overstimulated. The usual options, alcohol, sleep aides, benzos, a.k.a. the devil's drool, either numb you or extract a painful tax the next day.

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those things you dial in yourself. All right, let's get back to this conversation with Clea McKenna. Well, yeah, the, it's makes me, I was listening to some Thomas Merton audiobook, and, you know, he's like a Jesuit, like he's a hardcore Catholic, but, um, and it's heavy, it's heavy. But he does every once in a while say these unexpected things. It's fascinating, but he was saying something similar, which is it's the, pursuit of beauty, you know, that if you want to connect with the divine, it's through music and art. And you elevate your consciousness in contact with art. And that, that, but it, you know,

you, I'm curious, do you, it's, your dad has created this sort of bifurcated reality, the up and the down. Is there an up and a down? I mean, isn't the whole damn thing just the most psychedelic thing there could be? You know, aren't, aren't we? sort of a meshed in a thing that is so unbelievably wild that just being in the moment at all and sort of noticing your appendages is just like, what the fuck is this? Like, what is happening? Yeah. Yeah, but I feel like a lot of the time we like, yes, I agree, but I feel like so much of the time it feels almost like you're wearing like, I don't know, dark glasses or something where like, yes, it's there and yes, the world is rich and alive in all those ways,

but we can't quite like remember that or we can't quite like feel that all the time. And then, you know, when you take mushrooms, then suddenly it's like you took this like haze off and you're like, oh, yeah, it's really, everything is really interesting, you know. And so bringing that into your down life, holding on to that level of intensity and that level of curiosity and wonder in your downlife. life, which, yeah, certainly, I mean, my answer to it, if I look at my, the choices I've made, my answer to it is to make art, you know, it's that simple. Yeah.

And I mean, that's like, that's the moments when I feel in touch with that, you know. Yeah, I think that you, what an incarnation you're having. And to the work that you are doing now, um, it's it must be so painful like I did this show called the midnight gospel some time ago and in one episode I recorded a podcast with my mother who is oh thank you I recorded a podcast with my mom when she was dying and you know we had to do this episode with from that podcast and I I you know I had to kind of sit that one out a little bit because it was so you know it's still I can I can barely watch that episode I can barely watch that episode. I can't imagine, first of all, 19 is, there isn't a good time to lose a parent, but 19. Oh, no, that is so tragic. And then to go back to take on such a responsibility, it just must be deeply emotional for you to go into those archives to hear your father. I think then I, yeah, when I first,

started doing building this archive about a year and a half ago I did feel that way and there were days you know like I'm working with other people we have a bunch of volunteers I have like a whole kind of operation and there are definitely certain boxes that Kelly Kelly Isworth who works very closely with me will be like oh let's go through that box today and I'm like no I got to do that one alone like I got to save that for a day when I'm here and no one else is here and no one's going to interrupt me because I know that that box is going to be like yeah you know. But at the same time, you know, it has been, it was 25 years since his death, so I had a lot of time to process.

I also did a project in 2008, the Butterfly Hunter, which is a book. It was an exhibition that became a book that was using his butterfly collection that I had inherited. And that project, I did eight years after he died. And it really felt like a mourning ritual. Like that was definitely, I did it in this kind of very systematic one. hour a day, sifting through all these, you know, old butterflies wrapped in paper and their little tiny fragile bodies and photographing them for this exhibition. And that felt, had that feeling. Like I was like working through a process of grief that I had not really done when he died. This feels different now. This feels like it's less about him personally and who he was to me as my dad and more about

like his work and his ideas. And I feel like I have a little more distance and I have, I'm thinking about more how it can be accessible to the public, how we can curate, you know, new releases and publications. And it's like less intimate kind of than that project I did in 2008. Yeah. And I feel like really, also there's a lot of like, yes, sometimes it's sad, but it's more it's kind of beautiful because it's bringing parts of him that I had forgotten about back to the surface. I also have kids now who are old enough to understand what I'm doing and they never got to meet their grandfather.

And so they're getting to like hear the podcast episodes as I'm editing them and stuff and be like, oh, is that our grandfather's voice, you know, like interact with it in a way that will educate them. So, you know, it's not all dark. It's not all heavy. So sweet. Yeah. No.

And also, I mean, is a tremendous admirer of your father, a tremendous admirer to imagine that there are things we haven't heard yet. That there's, you know, things that we, that we haven't. So many of us are just going to freak out, man. Like when you drop new episodes and there's things that haven't, you know, because some of his. writings, you know, you go over them. I mean, I don't want to over amplify my love of Terrence McKenna, but, you know, it's, there's almost like a, it is scriptural to some degree. You know, you go back and revisit it and it's so powerful. I mean, his writing, like, I wrote down a few, um, Niagara's of Epiphanous Beauty. Who says that? That's one of my,

that is the most incredible thing I've ever heard. I always return to that. A Niagara's of epiphanous beauty. Death from astonishment. Like, what? He was good with a turn of phrase, that's for sure. Yeah. God.

He was, he was throwing the, sorry, he was throwing these linguistic nets into the psychedelic realm and pulling the creatures, it's as close as anyone's come to pulling that universe. into this universe that I'm aware of. Well, and that's how he describes the job of, well, really the job of anyone, but particularly the job of an artist in a society is to like cast these nets out into the unknown and try to bring something back. And you know, he has that whole thing he talks about about like not a little tiny fish, not a giant whale, but something that we can actually, that's like meaty enough to be meaningful,

but but also to be manageable enough that our minds can handle it. You know, because as we all know, sometimes there's stuff where you're like, that I can't even, I don't even know how to wrap my mind around it. And in a way, those things are not always as like applicable kind of to life, you know. But yeah, he, I really, I see his work now, like now with the distance. I really see his work as philosophy primarily. And certainly not as gospel or instructions for life or teachings. You know, I really reject that idea.

And I think he does too. And he did, you know. He really believed in general in no middleman, you know, that like both with your drugs as well as with your ideas, there should be no, you know, no priest, no guru, no, sure. I'm sorry for saying scriptural. There's a better word for it, but I'm no, Terrence McKinnon. Like, I don't know the best way to articulate that. Yeah, but also, you're not the only one. A lot of people experience his, his words that way. And I have to just always say, like, yeah, it's not, you know, like those

warnings, like, this is not medical advice. It's not. medical advice. But I experience it as, as, I see it as philosophy, but when I, when I ask myself, okay, how do I engage with this and what, how do I judge this? Like, how do I judge the quality of this? I use the matrix that I use for art, for experiencing art of like, not like, well, you know, a lot of people when they, when they talk about his work, they want to break it down into these like factual little nodules and be like, well, in this one talk, he said this, but then two years later he said this. So what did he really mean? And was that inconsistent? I, like really don't go down that path. I see it as art. And so I ask myself, am I moved by this? Does it

stretch my heart or mind? And if yes, then that's valuable art, you know? And to me, that's like enough, kind of. I don't need every little piece to line up to make a watertight argument, you know? And honestly, you know, like some of his big theories like with the time wave zero and stuff, there's tons of cracks in those theories. And so that's not going to work for those anyways. So if you want to still be tuned into it, I think you have to find a way to tune into it as a philosophical inquiry, not as, you know. Science fact. I mean, cackeon particles moving backwards through time. Come on. What is that? Like, but then retrocausality is really in the zeitgeist right now. People are really talking like, you know, you hear people talking about retrocausality now. And,

Yeah. You know, the talk around quantum. Yeah. And there's also like there's people every, every couple of years, a new scientist brings up essentially the stoned ape theory again as like a possibility. And then it's like, well, maybe not, but maybe, you know. So. Yeah. Who knows? That one, that one holds, that holds more water for me a little bit. But do you, do you consider, I'm sorry for even asking this. I think I don't answer. But. I mean, you have all of, you, you own the IP on every single thing, I'm assuming on everything, meaning that you could theoretically train an AI on all of that and create a, you could create, you can resurrect your father. And would he be against that? Do you think he would be against that? Okay, he would, he'd be like, don't make me into a ghost.

I think he would, I think he would absolutely be against that, but there's also a part of me that's like, I don't care whether he would be against that or not, I'm against that, you know? And there is a little bit, like, if I'm going to put my, I literally have put my art career on hold to do this job. I'm doing this job for all time right now. And so, like, I do get a little bit of a say. You get all the say. You get all the say. What a sacrifice. What a sacrifice? Why are you doing that? Why are you putting your entire art career? Your art is wonderful. Why are you? It's not forever. Okay. It's temporary. And, uh, and it's, you know, there are seasons in one's life. You know, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. And, you know, it's wonderful. And,

life and right now this is the season I'm in. But no, the AI question is really like when people point to things he said about technology towards the end of his life in the late 90s, often people try to kind of extrapolate on that and think he would be more of a, you know, more of an advocate for this kind of technology now. I don't think that that's true. I think that if you look at the roots of his ideas, if you look at the archaic revival and the place where his ideas were most fleshed out, their roots. in, you know, humanistic values and valuing nature, taking care of nature, you know,

valuing human creativity and human connection. And actually, like, a surprising amount of, um, of, of, a surprising amount of optimism about the human potential to adapt, to evolve, to figure out a way to live better, you know, when he talked about. the stars and a dash to the stars and all of that. He was talking about raising our consciousness to a level where we become transcendent in some way. He wasn't talking about just raising technology to the level where we can be like dumb beasts that get on a rocket ship.

You know what I mean? Right. So it's not just about building the technology. It's not just about building the technology. and then using it for like flawed human means. It's about actually our consciousness raising. And if we don't bring that to the table as well, then we're in, like he says, a crisis of consciousness,

which we're in right now. I mean, he did predict that one. Dumb beasts on a rocket ship. You just did a McKenna turn of phrase. That's really good. Dumb beasts on a rocket ship. I feel like you're so right. That could be an animation in Midnight Gospel.

I can see it in that style. I think what is more horrible than that? This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Cash app. You know what I wish? I wish as a parent that we lived in a world where we were photosynthetic and we could just commune with nature and absorb natural animistic prana from the trees and not have to worry about like the the boring, mundane banal shit that we have to worry about every day. I just want to float on the winds of time with my children and my wife in a state of eternal ecstasy.

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Visit our link in bio. Thanks, Cash App. It's like you get, but he did talk about this. He talked about this race between technology, but, you know, dumb beasts, dumb apes with this ability to split the atom. What a disaster. And he talked about that. It's a kind of race between.

And you're right. You're totally right. He, I get it now. Of course. He would look at AI as like TV. He would see it as something for the masses probably. It's a dumbing down thing. It's not anything.

And even worse, it tricks you into thinking it does have a spirit. And you know what? And it is. It does that he would hate is it takes away our sense of wonder. Because, you know, as we all know, We used to be able to scroll through Instagram and see really cool weird things and have that. And now everything you see, you start to have this flutter of wonder. Like you see some crazy animal video of some animal doing something.

And you have this flutter of wonder. And then you go, oh, no, it's just AI. And so over and over again, your sense of wonder is just squashed. And I think he would hate that, you know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're right. So people are trying. People have made avatars and AI. chatbots of his voice and and I do not license those projects those are not those are unauthorized but I will tell you that for the podcast so in the archive you know there's a lot of we have over 600 cassette tapes that we're digitizing and working with but we also have a huge amount of physical paper material that's not in audio form and so figuring out how to share some of that you know we have his journal

We have thousands of letters. He was a really big letter writer and saved his correspondence. So we have a huge amount of correspondence. And I've done a lot of work to reach out to the people who we have a lot of letters from and then see if they saved his letters so that we can have the complete both sides of the conversation. And we've been able to create that in some cases. So we're taking that material and working with a guy, a human guy, who's a Terence McKenna impersonator. and he's doing kind of dramatic readings of the journals and the letters.

So those will be in the podcast as well. So, you know, who does it? Wow. Wow. Good. That's so cool. I mean, this is such a gift you're giving everyone. And I hope people realize that. That this is, it's just, and what great timing. What a perfect moment for him to sort of appear in the culture again. you know, I think there's a lot of guidance he was giving people. I'm not saying, you know,

again, I do think, I get, when I say prophet, I don't mean like Ezekiel or something. I just mean like he was prescient, you know, he knew he could see what was coming. So I am so excited. I think the timing, I mean, you know, I am somewhat grateful for the way that his work has just proliferated through the internet, even though it has all been, you know, without permission and pirated and whatnot. But it has kept his ideas alive and kept his ideas relevant in the culture. And so in a way, his presence never really went away. I just think there was kind of no one steering it. And well, and also, may I just, I'm sorry to cut you off. I'm just, I'm so sorry. I have to say this or I'll forget. You know what else is messing up his presence?

these sons of bitches who have to put trance music under every freaking thing he says do you know how annoying that is I just want to listen to your dad talk I don't want to listen to some like a be the

whatever I just want to listen to his voice do you know what I'm saying it is a plague it's like barnacles on a whale you know like trans music sticks itself to your dad's lectures and it is blasphemy, please put just, if you were just to put out all his lectures minus trance music, that would be enough for me.

Well, the way you feel about that, I feel about the aesthetics that it's been treated with. So, you know, every talk you find on YouTube is just like acid color, fractal spinning, AI, you know, and I have a real personal vengeance about the aesthetic that psychedelics have been packaged in for the last 30 years. but I feel like we got... God bless you! In the 90s, this thing happened. I think of it as like 90s doing 70s. It was this aesthetic, you know, that came out of like 70s rock posters and all of that,

which I loved. Yeah. But then the 90s kind of rehashed it to just be like trippy. And then YouTube and the internet culture latched onto it. And it then just weirdly like didn't evolve. And aesthetics, aesthetic trends usually evolve more than that. But for about 25 years, we've just had like the same kind of, you know, trippy, fractal, bright colors, drippy. And then AI walked in.

And basically just like turned up the volume on that and like stirred the pot up. And it's just, it's time for psychedelic culture to aesthetically evolve. It's time for us to figure out other ways to make. I can really rant on this. other ways to make to represent the psychedelic experience because not everyone sees that when they trip that's not it's not you know our experiences on on drugs are as unique as we are and so why are there not more different aesthetics to represent that you know so that's one of i have i have some um you know there's like publicly what we're doing and then there's kind of my like underneath agendas for

working with his material and one of them is is this issue of aesthetics and so What we're trying to do with the podcast, but also with anything we produce, is to offer his work in a different kind of visual packaging than it's been offered in and in one that is less coded to a specific scene or subculture. Because I think about that kind of aesthetic as like a barrier to entry for a lot of people. You know, if someone sent you a link to a talk and said, oh, this is really interesting. And you hit play. If it was me and I saw that aesthetic, I would instantly just be like, this is not for me, you know? And then that blocks. I've done it.

I've done it. Yeah. No. Listen, I can get conspiratorial about it. Maybe that's some dark conspiracy to keep his ideas out of the zeit guys by putting shitty music and awful art around it. So that anybody with any sense is like, I'm not watching. And that I'll have a seizure.

I don't know what this is. Exactly. Yes. So I'm, I'm trying to, I'm not, and again, I'm not trying to like, I'm not taking down anything that's out there. I'm not trying to like undo what's been done. I'm just trying to offer a counterpoint and offer a different kind of aesthetic for it. And, um, and also to foreground some of his ideas that are not about psychedelics.

Like in curating the podcast, we've really identified like these kind of pillars of thought and themes. and we're trying to lift up, you know, his ideas about nature, his historical interests. He was obsessively interested in certain weird chapters of history, you know, so bring some of that forward and just create his talks about creativity, things that are not all drug-focused, you know, because I think in the filtration of 20 years of YouTube,

those are the bits that have kind of like come to the surface, but that's not the whole story. Yes. Cool. Oh, I, when, is it? Is the podcast out yet? When does this release? No, he comes out.

When can we start listening? What? Yeah, November 10th. November 10th. Everyone. Where can people find this? I have been told you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. That is the phrase.

But it's being produced by Lex Natura. What are you titling this? Hmm? Oh, it's called Terence McKenna's Blue Street. What are you titling it? I'm sorry. Terrence McKenna's Blue Street. streak. Now, why are you calling it blue streak? Well, there's a few reasons. One is, you know,

the kind of saying, like, oh, he can talk a blue streak. It's like a kind of ranting, a kind of colloquialism for a kind of talking that just goes and goes and goes and has this level of enthusiasm. And then also, you know, the blue morpho butterfly is a butterfly that he had a kind of fixation on. And he had, he was really, he really loved iridescence and where iridescence appeared in nature. So a lot of times that was on on beetles, on butterflies, sometimes on certain plants, sometimes on the surface of water. But he really, I don't know, he was really into this idea of iridescence. And the blue morpho butterfly is this brilliant blue, but also iridescent. And, you know, fleeting, kind of, um, something you can't hold on to. Something.

you can't really grasp. And so, yeah, we just kind of thought with those two double meanings, it felt right. And so, yeah, it's Terrence McKenna's Blue Streak. It's from Spector Vision Radio, and it will be every other Tuesday starting November 10th. Well, it has been a joy chatting with you, Clea. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I wish you the greatest success in what you're doing over there. It's so cool.

And I'm so excited to listen to Blue Shield. streak but you got to do it every week you can't do it every year sorry you can't do it that's what daniel says he's right he's podcasting it's cruel it's a cruel world but you got to do it every week there's no way around it yes yeah well we'll get there but we're the best slow clea thank you so much how can people find you how can people see your art we spent all this time talking about your dad we didn't spend any time talking about you or your how can people connect to your work too?

Yes, Clea McKenna.com is my website, and I'm on Instagram as Clea underscore McKenna. So you can find my work in either of those places. And yeah. Groovy. Thank you so much, Clea. It's been a joy. Thank you.

I appreciate it. That was Clea McKinna, everybody. All the links you need to connect with Clea, Lux Natura, and Terrence McKinna's Blue Streak will be down below. And don't forget to come see me. at Mike Drop Comedy in Detroit next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'll see you next week. Bye.