Fresh Air - The Birth Of Psychedelic Science

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

You may have heard about the pioneering research of anthropologist Margaret Mead, but do you know about her work with psychedelics? Mead and her husband, Gregory Bateson, thought psychedelics might reshape humanity by expanding consciousness. We'll speak with author Benjamin Breen about that research and how it led to the CIA's secret experiments in the '50s and '60s, using psychedelics in interrogation. He also shares with us details about a NASA-funded experiment to try to get dolphins to talk by giving them LSD. His book is Tripping on Utopia.Also, John Powers reviews the Apple TV+ series Criminal Record.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry Gross has a few days off, but recently she recorded this interview about psychedelic science, the center of that research was Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, and her third husband, Gregory Bateson, one of the most controversial anthropologists of his time. That early history is covered in the new book by my guest, Benjamin Breen. He writes about Mead and Bateson's early utopian-oriented research,

then how during World War II, they worked on a team using hypnosis and mind-altering drugs in an attempt to defeat Hitler and fascism, the CIA's secret psychedelic experiments of the 50s and 60s, and how all this connects to the counterculture of the 60s, which popularized LSD, mescaline, and magic mushrooms. Breen goes down lots of interesting side roads along the way. For example, NASA funded an experiment giving psychedelics to dolphins in an attempt to teach them to speak. One of those dolphins appeared on the TV show Flipper.

Breen's new book is called Tripping on Utopia, Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. His previous book, The Age of Intoxication, Origins of the Global Drug Trade, won a medal in 2021 from the American Association for the History of Medicine. He's an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Benjamin Breen, welcome to Fresh Air. What an interesting book. You know, when I learned about Margaret Mead in school, it was that she was a pioneering anthropologist who did groundbreaking research in New Guinea. No one mentioned her psychedelic research or that she was bisexual. It was just something else that you cover in the book and how that nearly ruined her career, but we'll get to that later. Right. So Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, they started as utopians.

What was their vision for using plant-based psychedelics to expand human consciousness and help heal the world? Well, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson came of age in a time of enormous change, you know, in the aftermath of World War I. But also, it was a period of rapid technological acceleration. You know, this is the beginning of a lot of the things we take for granted today. For instance, radio or the automobile, the beginnings of the information age. And so they saw science as something which was responsible for some of the bad things in the world that they were trying to heal,

but also something which could be a tool for fixing the world or healing a sick society, as Margaret Mead liked to say sometimes. And initially, their interest in what I, in the book called the science of expanded consciousness or this idea of enlarging human potential through science was not just centered on psychedelic drugs. It was centered on things like the exploration of trance states, which they were studying in Bali, expanding conceptions of human sexuality. That was a large part of Margaret Mead's work. And also they were fascinated by hypnosis. in the 30s, they begin separately and also together after they meet in New Guinea in 1933, to develop this vision of themselves and of science as potentially able to achieve something

like a utopia on Earth, to achieve things that were beyond the reach of previous generations of scientists. And that brings them together. Margaret Mead's specific interest in psychedelics begins in 1930 when she does fieldwork on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska and begins noticing that the people of the reservation were using peyote. And Mead comes to see it in a distinctive way. Rather than seeing peyote use among the Omaha as something which predates the modern era and goes back to this ancient tradition, she came to see it as something which was modern and allowed people to cope with the rapid technological changes they were going through. So she sees that with indigenous Americans and then goes to New Guinea. What does she see there that feeds her idea of how like trance or hypnosis or, you know, plant-based psychedelics could expand human consciousness in a positive way? One of the key moments actually comes after New Guinea. So in New Guinea,

she's mostly studying, you know, things like kinship networks, pretty typical cultural anthropology of the era. She's also studying spiritual practices. But it's actually after she meets Gregory Bateson, and they fall in love, she goes back to New York City. And she meets a guy named Jeffrey Gore, who is a fascinating figure in his own right, deeply eccentric man, who had recently, before meeting Margaret Mead, participated as a volunteer in an early mescaline study. And mescaline is the key psychoactive ingredient in peyote. And initially, he had not liked it at all. He said it was like living in a color film.

And he said, I resent these visions, frightfully cheap effect. So he wasn't a fan. But then as he was getting to know Margaret Mead, and they become lifelong friends, he comes to see that mescaline experience as transformative, because he thinks by tapping into the experience of this altered state of consciousness, it allows one to experience what it's like to be different people in different cultures. He says everyone who takes this drug has the same basic experience. And so it's like a skeleton key for unlocking the commonalities in human nature. And for Margaret Mead, that's a fascinating thing to learn. And he had just returned from Bali where he was studying trance states.

And soon enough, within a matter of months, Mead and Bateson are preparing to go to Bali themselves to study Balinese trance states. And soon enough, within a matter of months, Mead and Bateson are preparing to go to Bali themselves to study Balinese trance. They find some interesting things when studying trance states. And there's like very positive trance states. And then there's trance states that are induced through pain. And it seems like really bad pain. And the idea is to transcend the body through the pain and in this trance state. Can you describe some of what they witnessed in Bali? Yeah, they were fascinated by this tradition of trance dancing in Bali. And they wrote a book about it together.

They saw it, as you say, a transcendence of the body and also, crucially, a transcendence of one's sense of oneself as an individual, of the ego. So, in their telling, a Balinese trance dancer could become an ancestor, a god, or even an inanimate object. Like an object like a pot lid is the example that they give. It's a way of moving beyond the limits of one's own individual perception of the world. And an interesting thing that doesn't come across in Mead's public writings on this is that she herself prided herself on her ability to go into trance. And likewise, when I spoke to Gregory Bateson's second wife, Lois, she said that he would sit sometimes for 10 minutes at a time or more in a kind of

trance state thinking. So they both had a kind of natural inclination toward altered states of consciousness. And in Bali, they make it their life's work, I think. And one of the things that's important to them in this project is that they see it as not just relevant to Balinese society. They think the work they're doing is practical. It can be reapplied in different settings. And it can help, for instance, they're interested in curing schizophrenia as a result of this research. And they also come to see hypnosis and altered states of consciousness more generally as powerful tools of the emerging science of the 1930s. So she and Bateson not only shared an interest in altered states of consciousness,

they wanted to redefine gender as being on a spectrum, which was really interesting considering we're talking about the 1930s. What was Mead's vision? Because this was really something she was, I think, very passionate about. And being bisexual, she knew something about spectrum in sexuality. But talk to us about her vision of gender. Well, it's fascinating because it changes a great deal over the decades. Early on, she's truly radical, and I think really deserves to be remembered as a pioneer in understandings of specifically the division between gender and sexuality, which is now a widespread distinction that we make. But in the 30s, that was a very new idea that she helped develop.

Margaret Mead actually became an anthropologist in the first place, partially because she fell in love with Ruth Benedict, who was a famous anthropologist in her own right. And they originally met because Ruth Benedict was Margaret Mead's teaching assistant at Columbia. Margaret Mead was a student. And she falls under the spell of Benedict, who's actually in part studying visions in the Great Plains. And so the origin, perhaps, of Margaret Mead's interest in altered states of consciousness actually is this love affair she has with Ruth Benedict all throughout the 1920s. And together they begin to develop this perception of sexuality as on a spectrum. And in particular, Ruth Benedict and the early Margaret Mead are pushing back on the idea of what at the time was known as sexual deviance. They begin to make the argument, which becomes

very influential later on in the 20th century, that it depends on what culture you're in. You know, your frame of reference is completely shaped by the culture you grow up with, not just when it comes to sexuality, but your understanding of other forms of social deviance, for instance, drug use. But Mead and Bateson in particular, the 30s and 40s pushed this into a practical stance in society. So they begin to advocate very publicly, for instance, for the legalization of homosexuality. And alongside that, their interest in altered states of consciousness kind of exists as like a parallel. You know, this idea of sexual deviance and this idea of the deviant as a drug addict or a drug user are really entangled in 1940s society. And they're pushing back against both those things. You know, Margaret Mead was never portrayed this way that I am aware of.

Did she keep some of her research hidden? I mean, she published books, so probably not. And even just like writing about bisexuality or gender fluidity, that was probably really risky then. It was, very much so. She published books, but one of the really fascinating things about Margaret Mead that drew me into this whole book project was that she was also deeply secretive. It's hard to convey just how secretive and private she really was. Her archive is enormous, and it seems like she's an open book. But then when you dig into that archive, there's all these little clues and hints that there's other parts of her life that she's concealing from virtually everyone. In fact, at one point, she says, Ruth Benedict is the only

person who really knew her. And Ruth Benedict dies in 1949. And from that point onwards, by Mead's own account, she's kind of a closed off person. One of the reasons why she didn't publish all of her work or make it all public was she was actually involved in classified research in World War II and later in the 1950s. But the other reason is, I think, directly related to her sexuality. She was open about her bisexuality with people close to her. But in the world of the 40s and 50s, to go public with that would have been not just career ending, but potentially life ruining. And she knew people this had happened to. It's hard not to know people like that if you're moving government circles,

especially in the aftermath of World War II with the McCarthy era. So while Margaret Mead and her fellow anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, were still married, they became part of something that became known as the Macy Circle, which was sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Tell us about the Macy Circle and its role in early psychedelic research. So this is a group of people that I think deserves to be much better known. They're not only foundational to the history of psychedelic therapy, but interestingly, they're also at the very origin point of artificial intelligence research. This field of study called cybernetics also grows out of the Macy Conferences, which are hosted in the 1940s and early 50s. And it's, in large part, a joint creation of Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and their close friend Lawrence Frank,

who's an executive at the Macy Foundation, who actually they live with. They share a brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village together throughout World War II. The three of them basically create this new model of a scientific organization and a social and intellectual circle, which is hugely influential. The origin point for why this group gets interested specifically in psychedelic research is in World War II. It grows out of this belief that scientists needed to directly intervene in the war effort. And specifically, scientists who are studying consciousness, like anthropologists like Bateson and Mead, but also psychiatrists and psychologists, they tried to find ways that they could contribute. What this really looked like in practice was

what came to be known as psychological warfare. You know, forms of propaganda, ways of understanding how altered states of consciousness could be used in the war. And this led to an interest in hypnosis. It led to an interest in what was called truth drugs. And it led to the very early psychedelic research in the United States. Mead and Bateson are not conducting that research, but they're crucial for bringing together this group of people from different fields and framing it in a way that allowed psychedelic science to flourish as a potential pathway toward, you know, benevolent treatments, treatments that were healing for society. But also, and this is the really fascinating thing about the Macy Circle,

it also got the attention of intelligence organizations and the military. So by the early Cold War, by about 1952, the Macy Circle is being co-opted by the CIA. And that's the beginning of what I see as this really important split in the history of psychedelics between the public branch and the secret branch.

Right. Well, let me back up a little bit, back to World War II. Mead and some of the other people in the Macy circle believed that Hitler was driven by his unconscious mind and was tapping into the unconscious drives of his followers. And so the theory was, if you could break that hypnotic spell that Hitler had over Germany, then, you know, the war could end. So can you elaborate on that? And like, what was put into practice or what was considered being put into practice to break that spell? Yeah, it's a fascinating episode of history. One example I can give is that Gregory Bateson basically becomes the sole employee of a secret government program in 1943,

which is effectively about analyzing the hypnotic propaganda that he believes is being put out into the world by the Nazis. And so he spends months of his life watching and re-watching a single propaganda film produced under Hitler's regime in the 1930s. It's a pretty typical output of Nazi propaganda. It's portraying a member of the Hitler youth. And Bateson watches it so much because he believes that he's seeing in this film

a roadmap for the future, the dark future that he fears of psychological manipulation via mass media. lights of the city and of the film itself to effectively induce a trance state in an entire nation of people, an entire viewership. And so he's interested in fighting against the induction of hypnosis through technology. But what the sort of tragedy of his life in some ways, and of Mead's life, if there is a tragedy to it, is that they're initially seeing themselves as science in the service of human flourishing. But in studying these altered states of consciousness used as tools and as weapons, they also become experts in using altered states of consciousness as a weapon. And that leads them into a little bit of a darker corner.

What's an example of a dark corner this led to? Well, there's a really mysterious document that I found in both Bateson's archive at UC Santa Cruz and at Meade's archive in the Library of Congress. I found mimeographed copies of the same document. out what it is and what it means, but they're records of mock interrogations of Germans and a Japanese volunteer, it seems, who are subjected to hypnosis. And Bateson and a hypnotist named Milton Erickson are basically speaking to these Japanese and German participants in the study, seemingly as a trial run of interrogation of prisoners of war using hypnosis. And what makes that relevant to the history of psychedelics is that this is part of a larger project, which is overseen by the Office of Strategic Services, which is the predecessor to the CIA in World War II, that also has a whole branch involved in truth drug research. It's as if Bateson and Mead are

the hypnosis side of a larger project, which is also involving the use of drugs such as, actually, THC, which was newly discovered, sodium amytol, which is a heavy sedative. And the perception is that this would not only allow for interrogation of enemy agents, but may be useful as a chemical weapon. This is the beginning of what comes to be called psychochemical warfare, or as Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA, put it, the warfare for the mind.

So this is a dark corner, but the consistent thread for Mead's thinking is that she wants to kind of save the world through transforming consciousness, and she thinks that fascism and Hitler will be like the downfall of the world. So in her mind, I can imagine her still thinking that she's using drugs to transform the world in a positive way. Or hypnosis. Yes, altered states of consciousness in general are for me

transformative tools for good. But she does make an alliance at this point with the U.S. military and with the U.S. intelligence services, and that ends up, actually, I think part of what leads to the breakdown of her marriage to Bateson is that even though Gregory Bateson was himself an officer in the OSS and was very involved in that work, he comes to regret it and see it as a misstep, and Meade is never willing to go there. She always sees her work as part of this larger utopian mission. So was hypnosis actually used against the Nazis?

That's what I still don't know. One thing that we do know is the Nazis were themselves using mescaline in prisoner interrogations, and that this very quickly became known to the Allied powers, the British first, and then the United States. And they begin to emulate that. And in fact, they actually, via Operation Paperclip, this secret campaign to bring over Nazi scientists to the Allied side, they end up actually adopting some of that Nazi research. It's kind of like the definition of a bad trip, to be tripping on mescaline while interrogated by Nazis. It literally is, yes. It doesn't get darker than that.

Yes. Well, let's take another break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Benjamin Breen. He's the author of the new book, Tripping on Utopia, Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, it's Terry Gross here with a promo for a special conversation I had with my co-host, Tanya Mosley, only available for our Fresh Air Plus supporters.

When I'm going through a really hard time, I sometimes just think about that, like all the people who I've met through interviews who've come out the other end intact. Terry, I can only imagine the lessons you've learned over time. I mean, it's more than a self-help book, because just in the year that I've been doing this show, I learn so much with every single interview I do. Tanya and I select our favorite interviews of 2023 and talk to each other about talking in a new bonus episode only available on Fresh Air Plus. Find out more and join for yourself at plus.npr.org. Let's get back to my interview about the early history of psychedelic research

and research on trance and hypnosis. My guest, Benjamin Breen, is the author of the new book, Tripping on Utopia, Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. He traces that scientific research back to the 1930s, when anthropologist Margaret Mead and her husband, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, were researching altered states of consciousness in indigenous cultures. The book continues through World War II research into whether mind-altering drugs and hypnosis could be used as weapons to defeat Hitler and fascism,

and how that led to secret CIA experiments with psychedelics, which opened the door to the counterculture popularizing tripping. So we talked earlier about the Macy Circle and how this brought together a group of psychiatrists and anthropologists and other scientists looking to see how altered states of consciousness could help change the world for the better. Then after World War II, the Macy Circle basically becomes a fund group for funneling money and expertise to the CIA. So what exactly did they do and what did they hope to achieve by doing it? You know, it's hard to say exactly how they saw themselves. It's really around 1949 that LSD reaches the United States and becomes integrated into this Cold War work.

And one of the people who plays a leading role in that is Harold Abramson, a member of the Macy Circle who is a friend of both Mead and Bateson. So this is what's still a lingering question for me is Abramson is often portrayed as a villain. You know, he is a very deeply problematic person. He was doing, he was a psychiatrist who was doing research on the effects of LSD on his patients above board. He was publishing about this. But he was also the CIA's in-house consultant on people who are having bad trips or moments when the CIA's emerging interest in psychedelics leads to some really negative outcomes. So listeners may have seen the documentary Wormwood by Errol Morris, which is about the death of Frank Olson, this government researcher who either jumps out a window in New York City or is pushed out of a

window to his death. And the very first person that the CIA goes to when this happens is Harold Abramson, Mead's friend. And so she is kind of embarking on this journey to make science practically useful to the United States military and the government. But in so doing, she leads toward a really dark chapter in the history of psychedelics. Abramson himself, however, wouldn't have seen it that way. He thought he was actually pioneering legitimate treatments for things like trauma or PTSD. So finally, like in the years that you studied, how was altered states of consciousness, including hypnosis, used in fighting World War II or the Cold War?

Well, in large part, it's a story of failure. It was not, as far as I can tell, a super significant episode in the Cold War in terms of its impact on the outcome. However, and this is a key thing, Gregory Bateson actually, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, writes a memo to the head of the OSS saying that unconventional means of warfare will predominate in the years to come. And so this idea of psychological warfare being more important than the warfare of conventional arms, that becomes really important in the Cold War. So even though these psychedelic substances themselves, you know, the specter of LSD being released as a gas in a subway system, for instance,

that of course never comes to pass. But the idea that there's a war that can be expressed as a form of psychology, that we can fight battles through mass manipulation and through the media and through psychological techniques, I think that's very, very important in the history of the Cold War and even in the present. That is the world we are living in right now. Yeah, we're living through it, exactly. And it's surprising how much Bateson played a role in that. He was one of the first people to notice that and to remark upon it and actually to encourage the government to pursue it.

And then later he becomes one of the first people to criticize it. And Margaret Mead also was an early central participant in that larger struggle for consciousness as a battleground. I want to get into just a sidebar here because I want to talk with you about LSD. But here's something that really just astonished me. NASA funded programs, and this was what, in the late 50s, early 60s? Early 60s. Early 60s, funded programs to teach dolphins, trying to teach dolphins to speak by using LSD on the dolphins.

Well, that was the end of the program. Initially, it was going to just be teaching them how to speak by talking to them, and it didn't quite work out. So ultimately, the director of this program did try LSD. And one of the dolphins that was a subject of the experiment and was given LSD made like a guest appearance or was an extra in Flipper, the kind of kid show about dolphins or about a dolphin. And you're right that people working on TV shows like Flipper and Sea Hunt, which was a kind of underwater adventure series starring Jeff Bridges' father, Lloyd Bridges, that like producers and actors and people in the crew of those shows used LSD, that there's a whole like LSD subculture on those shows.

So what's the connection between them using it and the NASA funding? Did they get onto LSD because of NASA or did they convince NASA to do this dolphin experiment because they were already using LSD in their private lives? Well, so this is the part of the story that actually first grabbed me when I was beginning this research, because the very first thing I saw in Gregory Bateson's archive was a little drawing of a dolphin on a manila envelope. And I was like, okay, I'm going to learn about dolphins now, looking through it. I knew nothing about dolphins before, but my wife can tell you that for a period of about six months, I basically didn't talk about anything else but dolphins, learning how to speak, and the LSD research with dolphins. The person at the center of this story is a guy named John C. Lilly, who Bateson, in about 1961, ends up writing to,

and they become friends. Lilly invites Gregory Bateson to join him at this Dolphin Research Lab he set up with NASA funding and U.S. Navy funding in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And John C. Lilly is a physiologist, he's a kind of early neuroscientist who's really deeply committed to this idea that using things like computers and emerging scientific techniques, it should be possible to communicate not just with dolphins, but with whales as well, with cetaceans. In passing, this is actually a thing that's currently happening. Like I've spoken to dolphin researchers and whale researchers today who actually do think that's possible and it's ongoing work. So he was not crazy to think this. However, it doesn't go

that well. After an initial period when Bateson is really excited to have this new start as a scientist, because he's sort of, at this point, burnt out on his earlier work in psychiatry in the area around Stanford, he wants to move and start something new. They do make some progress in speaking to the dolphins, it would seem. At least by Lily's account, they are able to start communicating with them. And I've actually listened to recordings that are now held by Stanford of them attempting to speak to the dolphins. And you can actually hear them very laboriously trying to get them to count from 1 to 10 and things like that.

So the dolphins were supposed to, like, speak it or just, like, tap 10 times? No, they were speaking. Really? Yeah. I mean, Lilly's idea was that if you slowed down the recordings of the dolphins, you would be able to hear them making understandable words in English. So he thought the dolphins were – their speech is so high-pitched, their calls are extremely high in the sonic register, that if you use computers to lower that pitch, you would actually begin to hear them communicating. And there may be some truth to that. I have never tried to speak to a dolphin personally, and I don't know if it's actually

the way it works. But we do know dolphins have very advanced brains. Dolphins and whales do have, you know, language abilities. And so he was possibly onto something. And I did speak to dolphin researchers, some of whom said it was a wrong turn. At least one, however, said he was very ahead of his time. So it's kind of an open question. Bateson is really interested in this because his father was a scientist as well, who studied genetics but was interested in the natural world. And he wanted to find a new way to contribute to science through this work

that got him away from the world of the Cold War and of psychedelic research, which he had burnt out on. And then it's almost like a kind of this circular thing. It keeps coming back to him. John C. Lilly meets the producer of Flipper and of Sea Hunt, who through reasons that are still kind of shadowy and unclear, had become really into LSD at this point. I think it was via a UCLA psychiatrist named Oscar Janiker,

who was an early adopter of psychedelic therapy. Just Hollywood connections, you know. Cary Grant is using LSD at this time. It's moving around Hollywood. So this producer of Flipper befriends John C. Lilly, because Lilly's a around Hollywood. So this producer of Flipper befriends John C. Lilly, because Lilly's a dolphin expert. Lilly's to be the case is that Bateson does not approve of this research and starts to pull away from this project. And meanwhile, Lilly is injecting the dolphins with LSD and himself with LSD and spending literally hours at a time trying to talk to them. And again, you can listen to these

recordings. If you search online for the words John C. Lilly, dolphin, LSD, Stanford, you will find many, many tape recordings of this. And he doesn't make much progress, suffice to say. It doesn't have a happy ending either. No, the dolphins do not do well from that point onwards. NASA cuts their funding. The money runs out. Their tanks get more and more cloudy. Bateson moves away to Hawaii to start his own dolphin lab, strongly disapproving of this.

And Lilly continues on with this futile quest to get dolphins on LST to speak to him. And ultimately, by his own account, he claims in his memoir that at least a few of the dolphins he's working with commit suicide because dolphins can refuse to breathe. You know, they're choosing to go to the surface and breathe. This is Lilly's own description of what happens is that he says that Peter the dolphin, the one who was on Flipper, does commit suicide. Wow. Okay. We need to take another break here, so let me introduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Benjamin Breen. He's the author of the new book, Tripping on Utopia, Margaret Mead, The Cold War, and

the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. The therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs is becoming increasingly popular. Can you compare the understanding of therapeutic use now and in earlier decades? To a striking extent, what we're coming back to now in the 2020s looks a lot like what people like Gregory Bateson and the people he was working with in the 1950s were developing. So the idea is that you are in a comfortable environment. You're listening to music you like.

It's a nice fluffy couch. You're listening to music you like. It's a nice fluffy couch. You're with people you feel good around. You know, it's not like someone in a lab coat observing you. And you have a goal in mind. There's an intentionality to the way psychedelic therapy is conducted today. You're trying to solve some problem in your life or think through an issue. Those are all things that were developed in the 1950s. And to an extent, they were things that got erased or largely forgotten by the more, you know, radical countercultural approach to LSD in the 60s, where it becomes more of a recreational drug or imbued with mystical significance. I think a lot of what we're seeing now with psychedelic therapy is actually a return to the older model.

Well, your book about psychedelics and other mind-altering substances and trance states is really fascinating. I am, of course, wondering if you've used any of the drugs that you write about. Yes. I thought you would ask me that. And the answer is yes. Mostly earlier in my life, it's part of why I'm interested in the whole topic as an historian. But I will say, you know, as I was writing this book and researching it, my mother passed away from cancer, and I also became a parent for the first time. So those were some major life events. And there was one point when I wanted to kind of integrate those and think about them. And also just to think also just to think about how psychedelics fit into my own life where I took LSD about, let's say, I think four years ago.

And it was a meaningful experience. I'll just tell you one thing from it was that I was sitting in a field with my eyes closed. And when I opened my eyes, there was a small rabbit looking at me. And it had this big curious eyes. And for a moment, I felt like I was the rabbit looking at a human and not the human looking at the rabbit. And that actually is exactly what Bateson said about LSD. He said, the perceiver and the thing perceived become united into a single entity. And so having had that experience did, I think, help me understand what these people are talking about and understand why it's meaningful to them.

So taking these substances can lead to more integration in the brain and more neuroplasticity at the same time. You're right, psychedelics can be disruptive disruptive and they can interfere with the areas of the brain that relate to planning for the future. And I'm wondering, you know, that Richard Alpert Ram Dass's expression, be here now, about how psychedelics help you be in the moment. So you're living in the now, which is considered very zen and very transcendent. But one needs to plan for the future. So it's one thing to take a trip. It's another thing to live in that state. So what are scientists learning about how LSD affects in the short term and perhaps the long term, your ability to plan for the future? I mean, I don't think it's possible for me as an historian of science to really say what scientists are finding out on that topic now.

I do think that we are collectively as a society and as, you know, I as an interested observer, noting that even though they have very great value, I think, as tools for specific treatments, you know, specifically treatment of depression, PTSD, and possibly addiction, there are major dangers as well. And, for instance, psychedelic use by people under the age of 21 could be really detrimental. It does seem as if it may have some role in triggering latent psychotic states in some people. It may conversely actually increase anxiety in some people. And yes, I would be hesitant to embrace a world where everyone is encouraged to take psychedelics because there could be

downsides if they're being used by everyone. There's something here to be learned from non-Western and indigenous societies and the way they use psychedelics, the deep history of psychedelics, which is that it's usually a small segment of society who is using these substances. It's not everyone. It's a chosen person who's an expert who has some kind of special training. And there I fully agree with people like Michael Pollan that we need to find our own model that learns from that knowledge and that past experience as we begin to develop a social structure

that reincorporates psychedelics. Yeah, and I think one of Margaret Mead's concerns was when you take mind-altering substances or trance states and you remove them from their cultural and historical context, their ritualistic context, things might go wrong. Yes, exactly. That's part of why I think she's such an interesting voice to add to this history and this debate, because she's really an expert in this. And she studied this throughout her entire life. She was looking at the ways that too rapid change,

adaption to a really, really fast pace of life can lead to things like the formation of apocalyptic cults or increased violence or, you know, cults of personality like what happened, I think, to Timothy Leary. He became the object of almost spiritual veneration by some people. We have to be hesitant in some ways in too rapidly embracing these substances because they are powerful and they can lead us astray, as we saw, I think, with some of the stories of psychedelic use in the mid to late 60s. Well, Benjamin Breen, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much, Terry. It's an honor to be here. I really appreciate it.

It was great to have you. Benjamin Breen is the author of Tripping on Utopia, Margaret Mead, The Cold War, and The Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. Coming up, John Powers reviews a new crime drama set in London, starring two of the finest British actors appearing on TV. This is Fresh Air. In the crime series Criminal Record, two high-powered London detectives clash over an old murder case that may need to be reopened. Koosh Jumbo and Peter Capaldi are the stars in this new eight-part show on Apple TV+.

Our TV critic- large, John Powers, says that it's worth seeing for Jumbo and Capaldi alone. In the movie The Godfather Part III, the aging Michael Corleone is trying to reign in his young nephew Vincent, a hothead who's burning to murder some guy who crossed him. Never hate your enemies, Michael tells him sagely. It clouds your judgment. This philosophy gets put to the test in Criminal Record an enjoyable new crime series on Apple TV Plus

about two smart, driven London cops who become arch rivals It stars two of the best British actors on TV Cush Jumbo, whom you'll know as Luca Quinn on The Good Wife and The Good Fight and Peter Capaldi of Doctor Who and the Thick of It fame. Their characters wage a battle that goes beyond the simply personal to touch on questions about the ethics and politics of police work. Jumbo plays June Lenker, a mixed-race detective sergeant in a largely white police station.

She overhears a 9-11 call in which a terrified woman says that her boyfriend bragged about once killing another woman and getting away with it. The wrong man has been imprisoned for the crime. Taking this claim seriously, June checks the records and decides that the victim of this injustice is a black man named Errol Mathis. Doing her due diligence, she visits the officer who handled the original case a decade ago. That's Capaldi's character, Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty, a man as self-contained and calculating as June is headlong and passionate. Bridling at her implications he might have jailed an innocent man. He scoffs at her impulsiveness in reading so much into an anonymous 9-11 call. Naturally, the two take an instant dislike to one another, and over the next seven episodes, they wage guerrilla war. Convinced that Hegarty

is not telling the truth, June secretly throws herself into the Mathis case in ways that violate department protocol. Meanwhile, Heagerty uses his wiles and dodgy underlings to stop her from finding information that will cause him trouble. Knowing she's overeager, he places snares in her path to discredit her. Here, June realizes that she's been caught by one of his tricks, but remains undaunted. He played me. It was a trap and I walked right into it. He thinks, knock me down so hard I won't get back up again.

No. No. Not me. Like so many cop shows these days, Criminal Record aspires to being more than an ordinary police procedural. To that end, both of its antagonists must deal with confusing personal lives. While Hegarty wrangles a troubled daughter and reckless cronies, June often feels stranded. At home, she has a nice white husband who doesn't always see his own unconscious biases.

At work, she's treated with various degrees of bigotry by old-school white male cops. Meanwhile, the darker-skinned officers believe that June's actually being favored because her paler skin makes her more publicly acceptable. Now, I'd like to be able to say that Criminal Record offers the revelatory vividness of acclaimed hits like Happy Valley and Mare of Easttown. But in fact, the show's creator, Paul Ruttman, doesn't dig as deep as he should. He touches on tricky themes, like white supremacist cops, then drops them without fully playing out their implications. But the show is elevated by

its leads. Jumbo is a charismatically sleek actress who's sturdy enough to hold her own with Capaldi, a cagey old scene-stealer who revels in the chance to play an unreadable tactician like Hegarty. Where Jumbo's June carries her integrity like a flaming torch, it's less clear what we're to make of the hatchet-faced Hegarty, whose air of poised mastery feels like an attempt to contain chaos. He's the more interesting character because we don't know what makes him tick. Is he corrupt?

Is he a racist who treated Mathis unjustly because he's black? Or could he simply be protecting his reputation for being a great detective? As usually happens in crime stories, the climax is not wholly satisfying. The twists are too neatly tied. Criminal Record hits its peak in the middle episodes, when both June and Hegarty are at their most frazzled and devious.

While hatred may indeed cloud a person's judgment, a story is always more fun when its antagonists crackle with genuine dislike. Our critic-at-large John, reviewed the new crime drama Criminal Record. It starts tomorrow on Apple TV+. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, I'll speak with Kyle Chayka about his new book, Filter World, How Algorithms Flattened Culture, which explores how we are fed algorithmic recommendations that dictate what music we like, how we interpret the news, what movies we consume, even the foods we eat, clothes we wear, and language we use. I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Leah Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Sibi-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.