Otherworld - Interview with Susannah Cahalan

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Susannah Cahalan—American journalist and bestselling author of Brain on Fire, The Great Pretender, and most recently, The Acid Queen. We discuss her harrowing experience with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare brain inflammation that led to seizures, vivid hallucinations and hospitalization during a month long psychotic episode. This ordeal that ultimately sparked her deep interest in psychology and neuroscience. Susannah also shares insights from her latest work, offering a compelling look into the life of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, a central figure in the 1960s psychedelic movement and the wife of Timothy Leary from 1967 to 1976. Check out our Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In this episode, I will be interviewing journalist and author Susanna Cahelan. She has written the books Brain on Fire, The Great Pretender, and most recently The Acid Queen, which is about Rosemary Leary Leary, the wife of Psychedelic Pioneer, Timothy Leary. Susanna's first book, Brain on Fire, My Month of Madness, is an autobiography, and it details her battle with a rare form of incestinald. called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. To put it very simply, in her early 20s,

Susanna was going about her normal life and suddenly descended into extreme psychosis. She literally lost her mind for an entire month and spent most of that time hospitalized with a series of doctors giving her one false diagnosis after another, ranging from mono to schizophrenia, to some of them just saying that maybe she was partying too hard. Eventually, one doctor figured out that this rare autoimmune disease was causing her brain

to become inflamed. Not long after, she woke up in a hospital bed on the road to recovery with limited memory of the previous month. I thought this book was so fascinating and relevant to other world throughout history. Supernatural experiences have been dismissed. as mental illness and the other way around. There are so many more parallel themes between the book and the show. For Susanna, this experience led to an interest in psychology and the human mind, which eventually led to her next book, The Great Pretender, and her newest book, The Acid Queen, The Psychedelic Life, and Counterculture Rebellion

of Rosemary Woodruff Leary. In this interview, I talked to Susanna about all of this. I know it seems like a lot, but I really think that all three of these books and her own experiences tie together with many parallel themes. I thought this conversation was so interesting. In fact, I spoke to Susanna for so long that we ended up recording two episodes. So there's going to be a bonus episode on Patreon that you could listen to after this. If you find yourself wanting more, that's available at patreon.com slash otherworld. Let's get this started.

you're about to hear my interview with Susanna Cahelan and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello. Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. Exactly. I'm worried about all of a sudden.

It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them ahead. All right, everybody, welcome to Otherworld. Joining me today. author Susanna Cahelan, author of the book Brain on Fire, My Month of Madness, and most recently The Acid Queen, The Psychedelic Life, and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary,

Woodruff Leary, both very long titles. I'm holding the books here right now. Welcome to the show, Susanna. Thank you for having me. I got to tell you that I'm a huge fan, but now I can tell you here that I really love your show. So it's really fun and exciting to be here. That's amazing.

I know you told me you were kind of catching up on episodes before this. Yeah. Shannon Taggart, who is on your show, who I'm a personal fan of, and she's a friend of mine. She got me into your show a while ago. I'm a very big fan of Shannon Taggart. I'm a huge fan of Shannon. She's changed my life. I need to get her back on here, too.

Oh, you do, especially the work she's doing now, definitely. So we have a lot to talk about. We chatted on the phone a little bit before this. I have a feeling this is going to be a really fun episode because your first book, Brain on Fire, came out in 2012. That is not the book you're here to discuss. The new book is Acid Queen, but I feel like these books are sort of connected in a way, and I imagine they are to you. Yeah, definitely. Brain on Fire, I want to discuss first. And it's about you essentially losing your mind. Absolutely. Not even essentially. Like completely losing my mind. Completely losing your mind. Yes. Yes.

Totally untethered. Absolutely. And it's a really interesting story. It's a very famous book. I'm sure many people have already read it before. It was also made into a movie. You're making a face, but you know, it was made to a movie. It was.

I think the book was better. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. It's okay, though. Real quick, could you just give the audience a brief summary of Brain on Fire? If that's possible, I know it's a long story, but a brief summary of what this was and what happened to you. Sure.

So this was 2009. I was 24 years old. I started to feel off, and it was first just kind of like a cold, you know, flu-like symptoms. And then very quickly ratcheted up to hallucinations, paranoia, delus. illusions, you know, seeing things that weren't there, very strange experiences. I had a series of seizures, which was followed by hospitalization, and I was admitted to a hospital where I spent the next month of my life, where doctors were kind of presenting various diagnoses, the prevailing diagnosis that they thought I had was schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. And over the course of

that month, I was subjected to like a million dollars worth of testing. And ultimately, yeah. So one test? Yeah, really? Yeah. In America. Oh, my God. It's disturbing. And luckily I was, anyway, I go on a tangent about that. But at the end of that month, I was diagnosed with a newly discovered form of encephalitis caused by our immune system called anti-NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis. I was the 217th person in the world to be diagnosed with this. When I was released in the hospital, I could not read, I could not write, I could barely walk on my own. I was, I did some neuropsych testing. I was severely impaired. You know, the question was how much would I recover of my cognitive abilities? And it took me, I would say probably two years to return to

my level of functioning that I am now, which is I'm fully better. And the treatment included just kind of very typical autoimmune kind of treatments, which is steroids, and then something called IVIG treatment and plasmapheresis, which is basically like cleaning the blood of of these bad antibodies because the antibodies are kind of the bad guys in the illness. They attack the brain from the immune system and then replacing them with donor antibodies as well. So that's that's the story in a nutshell. Yeah. Yes. And, you know, it's hard to summarize something like that because you said at the end of the month, you got this diagnosis.

Yeah. It's not like you were just at home waiting. Like, you were in the hospital going through psychosis for a month. Yes. Like, this is a wild read, kind of a painful read at times because it's just so extreme what happened to you. And mind you, this is not a light mental health crisis. You were fully in the throes of it to the point where like Susanna was kind of gone. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I was not present for, it's strange, you know. I mean, I think we've all had experiences. of losing time. Like, I think that's kind of universal unless you have like a perfect memory. But, and I had had, like, I forget wide spots of my childhood. I don't know if you have that same thing. I have a lot of blank spaces. But this was, you know, a experience of my life that was extreme that I have some flickering, very unreliable memories about. Most of them are hallucinations of things that I remember. But a good, good bulk of it I don't remember. It's completely lost to me, which is a very unreliable memories about.

strange. It's a strange feeling. That is so wild. Well, I have a million questions about that. Like I said, I find that so fascinating. One, because losing my mind is one of my greatest fears, but also because the stories we tell on this show, one of the most common and frustrating reactions that people have to hearing that type of thing is they say, like, oh, these are just crazy people. Maybe they're just experiencing psychosis. And don't get me wrong. There are certainly a lot of those cases out there. But we go to pretty great lengths to avoid that. I think it's ignorant to write off experiences as something like that, just saying,

oh, this person's crazy. Especially when I read your book and I am seeing how intensive an experience it is going through something like that. And, you know, this doesn't just happen to somebody for five minutes while they're on their way to work one time and then they move on, you know. No, it stays with you. And I would even argue, like even like within crazy. Like within psychosis, there are sometimes like real, I don't know how to even put it in like a way that would make resonate.

But like there are real serious things that happen in psychosis that sometimes can't just be waved away for someone being crazy. Does that make sense? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's hard to separate. Yeah, it is. So, so walk me through where this all started for you. Sure.

So, you know, I was 24. This was 2009 in New York. I was working for the New York Post at the tabloid newspaper. And, you know, at that point, like, my actual life was so strange because I was, like, investigating mysterious smells in South Street Seaport and, like, going undercover as a stripper and, like, stalking celebrities. Like, they would send me to go whenever someone, a big crime happened. And there used to be a lot of, like, jailhouse interviews.

You don't see that as much anymore. But I would be sent because I got this major jailhouse scoop when I was still in college for the New York Post. So I got this scoop just like haphazardly. Like I didn't think I'd get in and then he'd talk to me for some reason. And so I became the person that the post would send when any big criminal went to prison. And I think partially or jail, partially because I was so young, I looked, you know, it kind of threw people off. But so yeah, so my life was really strange. Like I was like at Rikers Island.

every other week trying to interview people. So it was a bizarre time. And so I really think like looking back that like it took me longer to figure out that some of the weird stuff happening to me was actually coming in turn was like internal. Because my whole my life was so bizarre and high stress like deadlines all the time. I still have I still have nightmares about the deadlines there and like having to produce, you know, under high stress conditions. You know, the context around that time was so intense that.

It took me longer, but, you know, initially, I would say it kind of started with, like, a flu. Like, it felt like a flu. I was really tired. I was really depressed. I had a headache. I was just, like, almost like moving through molasses. And then I also had one-sided numbness physical, very, you know, obviously concerning enough to go to a doctor. And I got, like, my first in a series of misdiagnoses.

That first diagnosis was mono. They thought I had mono. That's kind of how I appeared. But ultimately, I didn't have mono, but that was the first kind of rule out diagnosis there. But yeah, it changed very quickly after that. I mean, it got really bad with you. There's, you know, in the middle of this book, you're like basically strapped to a hospital bed. And like, Susanna is essentially gone, right?

Like, I don't know if that's a good way to explain it. No, it is. It's a perfect way. The person I'm talking to now is like no longer in the room, which is, fascinating to me, like you're completely out of control. Absolutely. And I don't have many memories from that time. Like the only memories I have, and it's because like the illness that I have, which we'll talk about, it actually affects the memory centers of the brain. So I didn't create a lot of memories. Though I do remember things of like high emotional content because they're like

encoded in the brain in a deeper way. So I remember a lot of my hallucinations. I was extremely psychotic. I had a lot of hallucinations, extreme paranoid delusions. I saw myself on the TV. I had all these narratives about my father, killing my stepmother, and he was going to kill me. And then I'm in when I was in the hospital after being fluidly psychotic, I saw myself on the television. Like I saw myself. Like I saw my dad was arrested. Like this whole delusion had like followed me into the hospital.

But like the part that I thought was very other world. I experience a few things. I mean, a few things you can't really explain. I mean, like, you know, if you go in the deep dive, you're like, oh, temporal load. epilepsy because I had seizures can cause all sorts of like distorted perceptions and but I did have an out-of-body experience when yes when I had my first seizure so I had my first seizure um after like a good solid week of like really getting psychotic like I stopped eating I stopped sleeping I was starting to hear voices I didn't I didn't see things as much so I did I didn't have this experience

I was interviewing, do you know, like John Walsh from America's Most Wanted? Do you remember him? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I interviewed him about drug smuggling submarines. I don't know. Yeah. And I was real out there.

I mean, this is like the last interview that I conducted for like eight months. And his poor PR person, like, dragged him. He was like, went to, I think, you know, Fox News was in the same building. And he was interviewed there. And then he still had his, like, makeup on from the, the Fox News interview. So he kind of looked like strange to me. And I was, everything was strange to me at that point. And I was like walking in the hallway and like bumping into things. And like the, I felt like the ceiling was like going sky high. Like the ceiling had suddenly like went up like 50 feet.

And then the walls were kind of like breathing around me. And I just like stumbled into this interview and like just started like laughing hysterically. I basically was kicked out of that, that final interview and I don't think it ever aired. But, you know, my, my behavior was just starting to get more and more erratic. That night after that interview, that horrible interview, I went home and I was like, like, I had this feeling like, you know, when you're like anticipating something and you can't sit down? Like, you're just so filled. I was filled with that kind of, like, really kind of toxic anticipation, excitement mixed with like dread mixed with like just an inability to calm myself. And so I was just pacing around, pacing around. And I remember my boyfriend,

who was now my husband, like, tried to cook me dinner, tried to calm me down. He had no idea what was going on. And the last thing I remember was, like, watching TV, like watching some show, travel show with went with Poucho in it or something. And I had a seizure, and he witnessed it. So I don't, I don't remember any of this part. He witnessed the seizure. It was a grand mal seizure. He put me on my side. I was, you know, fully like, you know, moving my body in strange ways, like, kind of, like, woke up, bolt upright, like, staring ahead, but, like, not unseeing. But I remember being on a gurney, like being on a hospital, you know, like being wheeled out, wheeled into the ambulance. And, like, but, like, watching it. And I was in Hell's Kitchen at the time. This is where I

lived. And I remember just, like, looking at me and this person putting me in, into an ambulance, but I wasn't actually in my body. I was outside of my body. Yeah. You're watching it in third person. Yes, exactly. I just couldn't explain it. I can't explain that one away. And you really got put in the ambulance? I did. Okay, so you were seeing something that was actually happening. I was seeing something that was actually happening. I mean, I have so many questions about brain on fire and the experience of this. Maybe we could do like a Patreon bonus thing after this. If we have the time, fear up for it. I'm down. Because I would love to really dive in, But I think it's so fascinating.

Something that we kind of cover loosely on other world is consciousness. I guess we explore it in a way either directly or indirectly with these episodes. Mainly for me in the sense that like there's the mind, there's the brain, and then there's the possibility of like this other third thing that might exist outside of the body and begin and end outside of our lifetimes maybe, right? Yes. I think the stories that come up on the show illustrate the borders of these. Does that make sense to you? I mean, deeply. Or it at least forces you to think about it. And with your experience and probably some of the topics we'll be talking about in your next book, it helps people consider and explore the borders of where their brain ends and something else begins. And like for you, memory, hallucination, literal recreations in movie form. All of these things must be so mixed up for you in a very confusing way.

It's very confusing. And it's, you know, in some ways, in most ways, writing about it, like, gave me, I would say an artificial sense of control, but still a sense of control about the past because I had imposed a narrative about this chaos. You know, I kind of was able to change the past in a way by writing about it. And especially into, you know, what this illness caused in my brain was like this question of like, what are you? You know, are you like your memories?

Like, are you more than that? You know, the brain can be tampered with it. In my case, like my immune system targeted the NMDA specific receptors in my brain that are responsible for learning memory and behavior. I mean, like really diffusely all over the brain, but like concentrated. in those areas. And like, when you mess with those, like, you mess with those a little and you get a new personality, kind of. But like some of your old personality there too, you know, like, where does that end and begin? And then you're like, and Brain on Fire was kind of my most concrete,

in a way, like, even though it was a story of all these mysteries and this like idea of like, what is the self? It felt also very concrete because it was like, oh, look, you tinker with these little neurons and receptors, and you get changes. Like, it felt very one-to-one in terms of, like, cause and effect. So in some ways, like, I, even though this was the most, the wildest time in my life, it was, like, the most concrete in terms of, like, almost like, you know, concrete in terms of, like, oh, I felt like, oh, neuroscience explains everything, which I don't feel that way anymore. But that's how I thought. Yeah, I mean, I think for most people who haven't experienced something like that. You assume your brain is working, everything is going

smoothly. You have no framework of knowing what your brain and your mind is doing and who you are in comparison to your brain. Yes. And you wouldn't really know that until in your case, like something breaks, right? Then you get to see the separation. So I'm fascinated by that. what kind of internal dialogue you were having if you were questioning things if you were if you knew you were insane right like it seems like you didn't you know in the beginning I feel like when it was just like some of the receptors were being tickled like I definitely knew I was insane like I would say things like I was not my best advocate I would say to the doctor's like I have multiple personality disorder you know and but you know it was a combination it's so strange it's so hard

to really pin down, but it was a combination of feeling like something was seriously wrong with me and wanting to figure it out. So clearly I had some self-awareness. But then when I was in the midst of some of my episodes, like, you know, seeing things that weren't there, seeing my dad, you know, hearing my dad, a lot of it was auditory, though. There were a lot of visuals as well. Like hearing my dad hurt my stepmom, which wasn't, didn't happen. But I, but I heard it. Like, that was as real to me as this conversation. I mean, I, There was no doubt in my mind that that was happening. Huh.

That's fascinating. It's so bizarre. It really is. Did you learn anything about losing your mind and what that is actually like that you think people don't understand or there's like misconceptions of? I think, well, I mean, like societal, you know, preconceptions, misconceptions are like that it's all the time, you know, that like when you're crazy, it's all the time. You know, like you're, when you're, when you've, when you're, when you've have a serious mental illness or you're dealing with psychosis, like you're unreliable all the time. You, everything you say is intainted by that. But in my experience with autoimmune encephalitis, which is obviously not schizophrenia, but shares a lot of the same experiences is that it actually is in and you're in and out of psychosis. You're in and out of reliability. You know, sometimes you do have like a, the center comes back and then it goes away again and the center comes. That's what's so disconcerting about it. because sometimes you feel like you're back on solid ground or like if things feel like there's like a feeling in the way like your cognition changes when when you start to get psychotic, which like it's hard to explain really. But like the texture around you like becomes more porous or open or like I thought that while doing like research about psychedelics, I found this one description of psychedelics. And it's like I think it's all just Huxley that described it like that's a reducing valve like your consciousness. is like a reducing valve.

So like you're taking in stimuli from all around you. And if you took it all in, everything that was coming at you, like you would explode essentially. Like you can't take in everything around you. So you're like your brain is like, you know, constantly creating order and reducing what it's actually, you know, allowing you to perceive. Right. And I think when my theory of psychosis in terms of what happened to me is that it like opens it up. So that all of a sudden you're taking. in stimuli that your brain has learned over the years to ignore. And so in some ways, like,

your brain is taking in more, like, your brain is more open. But, you know, do not, does that make sense? Like, yeah, it does. It's like you're, like, I do really feel like, you know, if your reality, your perception of reality is shaped by your previous experiences, what you've decided is important. Like, when I go outside in the woods, I don't hear or smell. or perceive anything because I'm not used to like hunting or, you know, tracking animals. But like people who have like been raised that way see the world an entirely different way. That's what I think like animal cognition is so interesting. And like, you know, so I think there is something to psychosis, which like I think maybe opens you up too wide.

And it seems that when you were going through it like the the wildest, most extreme parts, you didn't realize that you were not acting normal or not experiencing reality as others were experiencing it, right? I don't know. Like, I did have a sense of specialness. Like, at one point, I believed that I could age people with my mind. So I would stare at you and you get younger and then I look away and you get older. And I knew that like no one else had. I was special. But this was like a mundane fact to you at the time. I mentioned. This was like a, it was like, oh yeah, I could do that. It was empowering. Like, I felt like super powerful. Like I was like, it was like, wow. Look at, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, like, grandiosity that happens sometimes in psychosis. But I, yeah, but I wasn't like, wow, I think I can

age people in my mind. I'm very sick. Something's going on here. Like, no, I believed it completely. Yeah. I was scared. I was angry. I was extreme. Like, and so I did feel things. Like, when I was aging people with people, people with my mind, like in awe of it. Like I kept like testing it. Like I can do it. Wait, so you would, yeah, you would age people and would it happen before your eyes? It happened before my eyes. I remember my doctor, Dr. Gazola, one of my doctors in the hospital. She, I, she was, you know, she was like doing a test on me, like a neurological test on me. And I was just like, every time I looked at her, she'd become an old lady. And then I'd like look away and she'd get really, really wrong. And then I look at her again and she'd get old again. So I could like somehow control.

the passing of time. And it was like, I mean, it was like super cool in a way. I was like, well, this is crazy. But also like filled me with this sense of like, I'm incredible. Like, I'm amazing. Okay. I could go on and on asking you very silly questions about this experience. And I will do that.

Let's do that. And a bonus thing. We'll figure it out. We need to talk about your new book. Yes. This is about Rosemary Leary. This is kind of unusual because we've not discussed Timothy. Leary on the show. But this is the wife of Timothy Leary. I'm going to let you explain Timothy Leary

to us in a little bit. But this is a book about his wife. We're going to discuss her first. And, you know, eventually I'll have to cover Timothy Leary on Otherworld thoroughly. It's a... I would love for you to do that. Yeah, it'll be a rabbit hole. If you do, like, let's talk because I have done lots of stuff. Briefly, tell me who Timothy Leary was and like what made you decide to write this book in the first place. Sure. So Timothy Leary, just in short, was kind of like, I would say he's like the face of the so-called, like, first wave psychedelic movement in America. And he was an ex-Harvard psychologist who was started to study psilocybin first initially. And its effect on mystical experiences, on recidivism in the prison system, and on creativity. And he was eventually ousted from Harvard for probably for a lot of those studies, but also.

also because he didn't show up the class a lot. And he was doing some, like, less than ethical things in Cambridge. But he ended up leaving Harvard and really entering, like, the media sphere, like the public space. And he was, he coined the term, which I'm sure many listeners know, which is, like, turn on, tune in, drop out. And even though he was a generation older than the baby boomers who would, like, really take that slogan and live it, he was the face of it. And he was just, like, everywhere. I mean, he was like one of the biggest names of the 60s and a huge, you know, proselytizer of the use of psychedelics, but also eventually one of the reasons why it was ultimately like thoroughly demonized by those in charge.

So he wears two faces in some way, in some respects. Yeah, a lot of the men we discuss on this show in terms of history have a, have that duality, right? Like the good and the bad. Tricksters. Exactly. Yeah. But you decided to write. this book on his wife. Yes. Yes.

A lot of women in the counterculture and like the paranormal supernatural history, however you want to call it, there are a lot of women behind their famous husbands or partners that kind of go uncredited, right? And especially in the people we've covered on the show so far, Jack Parsons and Alster Crowley. Totally. There's a woman, multiple women behind them that were doing a lot of the work, putting a lot of the ideas out there that, you know, their husband's sort of getting the glory for. I imagine that's part of the reason you decide to write this book. Absolutely. So like, you know, tying this together

with Brain on Fire is like, and I thank you for saying that you see the connection because like it is kind of subtle, but I think is to me clear. It's that, you know, I'm interested in altered states and I'm interested in like how the brain, mind, soul, you know, that whole connection. And I'm also interested in like how are how we perceive reality how could what like how consensus reality what what is consensus reality how our own perceptions can totally alter the way we see the world um so obviously that came from brain on fire like all of my work like my second book was about the history of psychiatric diagnosis through the lens of this like wild study where people went undercover I want to talk about that too yeah yeah keep going um and in that like I really found like the

limitations of science and research and found, like, that there's so much, like, art, um, other, you know, like, or like the unexplainable, like things like the placebo effect are fascinating. And so, um, that was all like in the ether. And, you know, obviously, if you're paying attention at all, you're noticing that there's been a kind of psychedelic revolution happening. They're, the mainstream is really accepting of psychedelics, even though they're still illegal and still a schedule one drug. And so I saw this happening. And I had written about psychedelics in both of the books in like subtle ways.

So in Brain on Fire, I wrote about ketamine because ketamine also affects the NMDA receptor. LSD affects it indirectly, but ketamine affects it directly, directly on the NMDA receptor. So I wrote about ketamine and like the rubber hand delusion. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah. Yeah. That's where like they would stab like a fake hand. on test subjects and you would hurt.

I think they're nicer about it. I think they'd like, you know, tickle it with a feather. Okay, feather. I have seen the stabbing one somewhere too. I've heard of that too. But I think like the nice, the nice researchers are tickling you with a feather and you laugh. When you're on ketamine, you believe it that hand. You're more likely to believe that that hand is yours.

There's like a disembodiment. So I wrote about that. And then my second book, The Great Pretender, I wrote about Humphrey Osmond, who came up with the term psychedelic with Algeus Huxley, like, they were in conversation with each other and came up with this. this word as a way to describe these substances. And he would actually give LSD to his architects when they were designing psychiatric hospitals. Because at that, yeah, I know, isn't it? You can't make this stuff up. This stuff in, like, science history is so great.

Like, it's like, it's like one of the reasons, one of the million reasons why I love talking to Shannon, because she has all, like, she has a lot of this, the science history, too, but also the paranormal on where they overlap. But we have, like, two-hour walks where we just. go wild. I mean, she's, anyway, but his, you know, at that time when Humphreausman was giving this to his architect, like LSD was seen as a psychotomimetic, like something that was mimicking psychosis. Psychedelics were used to understand madness. That's what they were originally meant for. And so psychiatrists would take it themselves to understand the experience

of their patients. Eventually, they noticed, oh, there's like a therapeutic, you know, improvement that happens where when we give these drugs. They started liking it. They started liking it. too much. They're like doing it with their patients. Yeah, exactly. I need to get into the headspace of my patient again this weekend. Maybe this is a good time. Yeah, exactly.

Me and the boys are going to leave the wives at home and just do some research by the beach, you know? But that was all happening. Anyway, I wrote about that in The Great Pretender. So I was interested in that. And so I started to, I live somewhat near the New York Public Library. So the New Republic Library has the Timothy Leary Archives. So I started going through his archives, which are like 400 bankers boxes worth of material.

Wow. It's like, it's a huge collection because he was like self-mythologizing. You know, he was like, he was saving all, everything. And Rosemary, actually, his wife will just talk about. She helps save preserve that. I mean, that wouldn't exist without her. But anyway, so I became aware of also another collection, a much smaller collection called the Rosemary Woodruff Leary Collection, and that was only like 25 boxes.

And I had never heard of her before. So I started going through her boxes and, like, found this fascinating woman. She was with Leary from 1965 to, let's say, around 1972. It's only seven years, but it's like during, it's like the height of his notoriety. It's a long seven years. Long, I mean, this is like, this is lifetimes in seven years, right? And it's like, you know, she was the one who was. was when his media persona took off, she was designing his clothes. She was helping editing his

speeches. She was like really like helping him create a persona. And she ended up helping him escape from prison. I mean, being like she called herself the computer. She was the one who connected him to all these political radicals like the weather underground and the black panthers. I mean, it's just like the most cinematic life. And she didn't even have a Wikipedia page. This is incredible. Like this is like I want to write this wrong. Like this. This is a, like, she, people should know about her. That's like where, like, initially started. And then I had all these synchronicity things happen that.

Well, let's talk about that. We were talking about this on the phone. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. Do you or do genuinely? No, I do. I do. I do.

I mean, I was. I'm like, I sound out. Listen, anywhere I'm going to get people to understand what I'm saying. It'll be here. But, so basically, I'm in her files. And when you're in an archive like that, it's really personal. I mean, you're talking. Like sometimes you have to use gloves when you're like dealing with photos.

But otherwise, you're like with your fingertips, you're touching her work, her handwriting. You're like looking at the coffee stain, you know, on her, you know, tax return from, you know, 1992. And, you know, you're looking at a life. Like you're really going through someone's existence. And I was feeling very connected to her. And I went shopping at the same time. I went shopping at a boutique in Brooklyn called Bird.

It's not there anymore. And I found this, like, amazing dress. I had recently had twins. So I was, like, super postpartum, very fleshy. Like, not, like, wearing this dress anywhere. Great. But I had, it had poppies, black poppies, all over the dress. And I wanted it, but it was too expensive.

And I Googled it. And it was just wild. The dress was made by this Swedish brand, wrote a beer. It was this like pre-spring 2020 collection, and it was inspired by the psychedelic, what did you call it? Psychedelic pioneer Rosemary Woodruff Leary. And so that, I thought that was so, I mean, what are the chances of that happening? And things like that kept happening.

Like I was around that same time. And so I was thinking, should I take this on? Should I do this? I was walking on the street. And I found a photo of an owl, just like pristine on the ground, like just with mushrooms coming out of its head. Like there was something written inside. It was like a card, like a thank you card, like a kind of cute thanks you card you'd

send to someone. I would later find that like Rosemary really identified with owls and she had constant dreams about owls. And in one of them, they were like clawing out of her eyes. You know, like she had real, owls were like really important to her. And they're in this path why I'm thinking about her. It's like there an owl is with mushrooms coming out of its head. No, I know exactly what you're talking about.

I mean, you told me this before and you were cautious because, you know, you were like, does this sound crazy or whatever? And it is kind of embarrassing sometimes to talk about that. But I do think like creativity and when you're starting something new, there is this like mania that happens in a good way, in a good way. And like you do kind of get signs along the way. Like I do think like synchronicities happen when you're headed down the right path. I like to believe that too.

It can feel like that. It can't feel like that. The problem is. I mean, yeah, go ahead. were you saying. It's like, you know, the line, that line, like you kind of go mad a little bit when you're in the beginning stages of like a project or when you're really immersed in a project. And like sometimes part of psychosis is like seeing the connections. And like, is that psychotic? Are you tapping into something? Are you tapping into, you know, that idea of opening your brain up

too wide? Are you opening it up too wide and then you really can't see the forest for the trees? Are you seeing things that are innate truths, but you're just like too out there to really like, I don't know, but I will say, like, when I, I do have that, I've had to experience a lot with this book. And she was really into that. Like, she was all about synchronicities. She threw the E Ching all the time. She had the taro.

Like, she was really, like, her life was animated and, like, really directed by her relationship with synchronicity. And so I, like, allowed myself to even open myself up further to that than I had ever previously allowed myself to do that. I felt like with the brain on fire experience, like, I would never really allow myself to go that far because I was like, A, worried about credibility. You know, you know. Yeah. And, you know, these signs, I think like when it comes to synchronicities, it's nice to have those little signs as like a little wink from the universe is like, okay, this is great.

Like, I'm going to continue this creative project. Yes. Versus if the synchronities you are seeing are pointing you to break into Jennifer. for Aniston's house with a gun in your underwear to tell her the truth of the universe. Like maybe maybe that's not a sign. Right. You know, maybe. But I just said you can't discern.

It's so hard. But yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know. I know. No, the problem, too, with the other side of it is like just in terms of like going through signs, which I still do. And I'm like a big, big person in this now in terms of following signs.

Is that sometimes you get signs, you don't like you get negative signs. Like this is not going to work out. This is not going to work out. You know, or like, you know, I throw the Eaching a bit. And like, there have been a few times, like, where I've thrown it and like, it's been like, no, don't do that. Essentially. And you're like, let's try it again. Exactly. I'm like, maybe this isn't, maybe it just like, like, maybe I need to change, like,

you know, orientation of this. They put it under a moon. Like, I try everything to make it. But every time I've, like, gone against, I, it's, it's been true. I think it's like when it starts getting in the way of living your life, like, getting in your way. You have to be careful. But yes, yes. And it's probably complicated given what you've gone through. Exactly. Like you just don't want to like listen to, you know. You're like careful, Susanna. Yeah. Well, yes. We don't want to go. We don't want to go back to the scary hospital. Listen, for real. I mean, like there was like there were times immediately like, I'd say like in the immediate aftermath, like none of these topics would be something that I would

be interested in going down at all. And if I had any like, you know, we all have like, you know, we all have like things we see out of the corner of our eyes. Like I've had a lot I've had some weird experiences in the past couple years but like like indirect weird experiences or like all of a sudden the light flickers in a weird way and you get like those like just like your perceptions off or like you see a like flash of a figure or something. I would be really worried like after my experience. Like that would like throw me, you know. I don't have that anymore. I feel like my feet are on the ground. Yeah. You'd be concerned in the opposite way that most people are. Right. I'm I have my feet on the ground now so I'm like more I hope I feel like I do but like I have more like I'm more able

to like stick a toe out in this world and like question some things and read something. You know like I would feel comfortable like reading things like listening to this podcast or you know I do I am sometimes careful about like my state of mind and what I take in sometimes when like I'm feeling like super raw. I might not take in like some of the scarier ghost stories that we you have here. But, um, but I'm like when I'm feeling solid, I can't, you know. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. And it must be, I mean, I know that it's spooky kind of like stepping into somebody's footsteps while you learn about them. I interviewed, um, Christian Hansen, along with his directorial partner, Zach, who who made the show the octopus murders. And he was researching Danny Castellaro, this journalist who mysteriously died during an investigation of this like all-consuming conspiracy. But Christian, while working on this,

realized that he was getting bizarre reactions when he would approach people who knew Danny back in the day. And eventually somebody was like, you realize you look exactly like him. And they like looked and they, it was like a spitting image to the point where he eventually played Dan. Danny in the reenactment footage. Oh, my God. But it became very surreal where, like, I think he eventually interviewed a relative of

Danny and the person was having a complicated time with it because it was like, this is weird. It's like you're, I'm talking to a dead man, you know, like you look so much like him. It was a fascinating thing hearing that from him of like stepping into this guy's shoes and how strange that is. Well, it's so fascinating. I used to feel like them a little bit. Why did this story find that, like, why did that person find that sort of, story and he happened to look like, I mean, there's something so interesting about, like,

the, the, like, when we're attracted to a story, I think when you take something on, like it does feel like sometimes when it's really good, like it feels like you didn't pick it. I don't know, like it's like, yeah, like, was he attracted to it or were the other way around? I don't know. Yeah. And same with you. And you had a interesting experience of your own. I did. I did. I did. Oh, yeah, yeah. I never really like talked about. I mean, I, I, I talked about it because I talk about things when things happened to me a lot. And I talked to friends a lot about it. But I have never, like, talked publicly about it because, like, it's so bizarre.

But I was writing the book. I was deep in the book, like, really deep in the book, you know, deep in her. And I had, you know, I was, again, like, I was really embodying. Like, I was really using her tarot. I was using the itching. I was doing her yoga. I was like doing her breathwork. Like I really, you know, I went, I dove in.

You were going all in. I was going all in. And I had had a baby. I was pregnant for a good portion of the book, which also felt like very, like nine months of the book, maybe 10 months. It felt bittersweet too because, you know, she had struggled with having children and that was like a big part of her, part of her biography is this desire to have children that she didn't,

She ended up, like, you know, expressing that maternal energy somewhere else. But I have my baby. He's like, I would say, three months old. And I was breastfeeding him in the middle of the night. And I look up and in the mirror, I see a figure. And the figure is like small. It's like a small, like a child-sized figure, I would say. and it's, but it's all black.

Like, it's like really thin limbs. Like, and no eyes. I couldn't see any eyes, but like a black figure, small childlike size. Like a shadow figure. Sure. Yeah, I felt more like it didn't feel like a shadow. Like, it felt like it was, I don't know how to explain why I wouldn't feel like it was a shadow, but it didn't feel like a shadow.

What did it look like, like the black? Like almost like round. I don't even really. I mean, very thin, limbed, I would say, like thin, but child, like, I don't think it was a child, but it, but my first reaction was that it, like, to think that it's a child size. It was dark, but that's all I can say, really. I saw it in the mirror in a flash, and I turned to look and it wasn't there. And then I looked back in the mirror and it wasn't there. But I was really scared because it was in my baby's room.

I was really scared. And I remember just in my mind, like I didn't say anything out loud, but in my mind I was just like, go away, like go away. You know, that's all I could think of to say, which is like, I was just really scared and freaked out. And the next day, I, like, told a few friends of mine who, like, have more knowledge in this area. And, like, they told me to sage the room.

And I, like, opened the windows and open the shades. Because, like, you know, I was keeping this room very dark because I was trying to get him to sleep. And I bound the mirror to, and moved it out of the room. because I really kind of felt it was the mirror. Like, it's an old antique, kind of antique mirror. Like, I felt like it maybe wasn't the room, but was the mirror. I don't know.

I did anything that I could possibly do. And, like, a friend gave me this, like, protection thing. But I think it, like, amplified it for me because it was, like, in where my baby was sleeping, you know? Yeah. And, like, for a while afterwards, I was, like, really scared of the room. Like, I felt really scared. And I felt that while I was really scared, the room was, like, scarier. I don't know. Like, I felt like it was like feedback looping. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, also,

let me ask you this. I'm curious, like, as a person who's experienced, like, extreme psychosis and, like, full on hallucinations, extended ones, like, what was the experience of witnessing this versus witnessing those? Oh, God. I mean, I guess because it was like... And, like, your reaction to it. Yes. Well, I think because it was so quick, you know, it was like my other experience, it seemed to be like more involved and prolonged. And this was just like I saw it. Like I mean, I saw it. And then I looked away and it wasn't there.

You know, and then, but, and I wasn't like, there was no like feeling afterwards that was like, that felt anything but fear. You know, like it felt like I didn't feel like I was in a state that was concerning to me or, you know, or I had, I don't know. I had no other issues or, you know, I don't know how to explain it. I mean, I just felt different. And this was while you were working on the book about Rosemary. Yes. Yes. This was while I was writing.

All right. We'll be right back with the rest of this interview. What else did you find most fascinating about Rosemary while you actually worked in this book? I feel like we have gotten around actually talking about her a lot. Yeah, of course. So, okay, Rosemary. Why did I love Rosemary? Rosemary is kind of this fascinating figure.

She was born in 1935. and in St. Louis and dropped out of high school and was in an extremely abusive relationship and managed to flee that relationship on her own in New York City, like became a model, was, you know, been a stewardess during a time where it was like harder to be a stewardess than it was to get into Harvard, apparently. Yeah, it was like the requirements were extreme. And you aged out by age 30. And she was, you know, in the, she would marry again to this kind of wild character who was a jazz accordionist who was from Holland and was a Holocaust survivor.

I mean, she had lived like 70 lives before she had even met Timothy Leary. And she had also started to experiment with drugs. She was like experimenting with like a lot of weed at like jazz clubs. And then she started doing LSD. And she really, she had this like really interesting mystical experience. she was eight years old in St. Louis where like she felt like she was plugged into some kind of electrical grid and like everything was connected. And it was like a real pivotal moment in her biography, in her life. And it's interesting because like a lot of like people later who

become like shamans or, you know, you know, kind of like religious figures often have these like spontaneous mystical experiences in childhood. And like some people have, like there's one book about spontaneous mystical experiences in childhood. It's probably called that. I don't know. But, you know, a lot of children have those experiences, but, like, we forget them or if, like, they're not, like, valued so they're not, like, seen as, like, but for Rosemary, she, like, inherently found value in that.

And I would argue, like, the rest of her life is kind of, in a way, like, trying to recreate that experience in her youth. Yeah. You know? And because it was profound for her. And so she, like, ends up in this experimental commune called. Milbrook, a Hitchcock estate in Milbrook, New York. And there, Timothy Leary and some of his Harvard psychologist pals and some artists and writers and musicians, like all got together in this

commune upstate, upstate New York, and where they were like kind of just messing with consciousness, like, you know, dyeing the eggs green and the milk black, trying to destabilize, you know, having like a bell toll like every few hours randomly and you had to like be suddenly present. like, you know, using a lot of the, like, the, like, kind of human potential movement, like, people like GERGev and really, you know, the idea of, like, that we're all, like, in a stupor and there are some people who are awake. And really testing that using LSD, obviously, like, in a very ritualized sense and, but also, like, in an experimental scientific sense.

So they would, like, log their reports. Like, they would always write about them or they would, like, try them in different settings. they would put people together for like a week dropping acid straight and they had to like report back on what happened. So like everything was kind of like both. And it was like some like, you know, Eastern religious kind of elements. There was like some, you know, like new age psychology, but also like some experimentation like all mixed up together with psychedelics going on there. And she found a home there and lived there with Timothy Leary for a good like, you know, three years. And undertook a lot of that.

and really began to like study, um, the use of psychedelics and like how to best, like, harness psychedelics and guide trips and like challenge and promote like what they were calling ego loss. So she became like a student of that and was considered to be like the queen of setting, which was like a reference to Timothy Leary's like set and setting the idea of like mindset, which could be like, you know, what's going on in your. mind, but also like your biology, like what you come in with. And then like your setting, which is the environment. And Rosemary was like a queen of set. Did he coin that term? Yes, he did. In the psychedelic experience, he and Ralph Metzner, Ram Dass were working on set

and setting. And so what were these two doing? I mean, it's, I, I'm really eager to learn more about Timothy Leary one day, but it seems to me that they were just basically going around spreading the gospel of acid. Is that what they were doing? I mean, I'm really eager to learn. I mean, Absolutely. I think a lot of people were doing that at the time. This was like a brand new revolutionary revolutionary thing. The economy was good. People had free time to hang out. Exactly. And do things like this, I guess. Yeah, you could drop out and like, you know, you'd be fine at the end of it, basically. But yeah, that's harder to do nowadays. I would say. I mean, there are definitely are communes out there. I'm sure there are people doing it. But so they're bouncing around. They're, you know, and Timothy Lee, really, even though you think a lot of people at the time were doing this,

He was really the biggest one and like the early adopter of psychedelics, the one who was really promoting it in like, you know, your parents talk show. Like, you know, like he was on all the kind of shows. He was in every single newspaper. He was the face. And he, you know, he had talked to like the media theorist Marshall McLuhan about how to promote this. And like the big thing was like to do it with a smile and sell it like Coca-Cola. And that's what he was doing.

Yeah, and they did not like that. No. No. I mean, at the time, I could be wrong, but at the time wasn't this famously called the biggest threat to American society and the Vietnam War, like LSD was. And Timothy Lerry, yeah, exactly. You know, Timothy Lerie was the face of that. And then he has the gall to run for governor of California against Ronald Reagan. Oh, wow.

And that's when he's arrested again. So he's arrested several times. but he and Rosemary were arrested at the Mexico border. Their houses were raided in Millbrook multiple times by. It's so bizarre. G. Gordon Liddy, I don't know if that means anything to you, but he was one of the plumbers, and Nixon plumbers in Watergate.

But he worked in Poughkeepsie before then in the DA. And he was one of the people raiding Timothy Leary's. I mean, speaking of psychosis, like if you learn anything about this part, of history, you feel insane learning about it. Because these people pop up and you're like, am I losing my mind? Or like, why was this guy in all of these places at the same time? You're so right. And I had like the FBI files of Timothy Larry's FBI files. And like so much of it is still redacted. It's all like just blank black spaces, you know? And you're like,

what is the deal? You know, even this far off. And then you see like all these undercover people in the Black Panthers and the weather underground. And, you know, it's just, it's a, it was a wild time. And, um, well, because all of this was a threat. I mean, that was, yeah. There was, there was, there were, you know, official and unofficial attempts to squash these movements, right? Because it was considered to be a threat.

And so there was like this effort, you know, and you could go down the rabbit hole of that. And the thing is, like, Rosemary was life. Like, Rosemary was like the right-hand woman throughout this whole thing. and her life was like the most directly affected in terms of between him and her. Like, you know, he did prison time, but he eventually cooperated with the feds and turned on her. Oh, God. Yeah.

So he ended up decoding their prison letters where she was planning his escape with him. He worked with the feds, tried to get her to turn to, tried to, you know, lure her with money, lure her with his love. And she ended up going further underground. And she never turned on anyone. That was the whole thing. So she's really like, it's really a story of like great integrity. And she like as opposed to his story, which is more complicated in that way.

She's also a really complicated woman though because like she's kind of like this transgressive person who was a seeker. You know, she really believed in the worth of like tapping into your consciousness and like expanding it and testing its boundaries and like taking things like synchronicity very seriously and like really like studying them. you know, like really becoming like a student of the cosmos, you know, whatever, you know, she really did believe in that. And she believed that like, you know, she has a great line, which I think is like could be like

a theme of your podcast, which is like she talks about what psychedelics did for her ultimately because she was not a proselytizer like Timothy Leary. She always found that uncomfortable because she knew that she believed that they were very strong tools and that they were not for everyone. And she would say things like, you know, the responsibility of turning people on, like really overwhelmed her. And she said it made her, she was a big science fiction fan. And she said it made her feel like Frodo in Lord of the Rings. Like having the ring, like just, it was like too much to, too much of a burden to like get people to drop acid who maybe shouldn't be.

So she was way more circumspect than Leary was. And like, I think wiser in her counsel. But like when she, she talked about like what effect. psychedelics had on her life. And she said, essentially, like, I see the beauty more in the world. Like, I'm more open to beauty. And, like, there are moments when I'm, like, you know, walking and kind of, like, like, when she was eight years old. And she's, like, kind of struck with the greatness and the vastness and the beauty of the universe. And she said that she believes, because of her prolonged psychedelic use, she probably, like, kind of believes in everything.

but also in nothing, but she's in a comfortable place. I love that line. I think that's so amazing, the idea of, like, being comfortable in the unknown, being comfortable in everything and nothing. Like, that's a very, that's a difficult place. That's like a very rocky terrain, you know? I think that's a good way to be. Me too.

I try to be a little bit. I feel like it could be your slogan. I really do. And that's why I love her so much. And that's why I was more interested in her than Timothy, because Timothy's like, like, you know, take LSD and see. You know, like, you know, you have to lose your mind to go out of your head. You know, it's like, you know, those are his slogans.

And she was part of creating some of those. But really, she was someone who was, like, way more respectful. And, like, I would say, like, mindful of, like, the fact that, you know, when you, and I think this, like, applies, that kind of perspective applies, not only to psychedelic use, but, like, talking about these, like, the paranormal, the esoteric, like, the idea of, like, having one foot on the ground. Like when you're like traversing these visions and like taking things like this seriously and really opening your mind. But like to still have your feet on the ground, like to still base it as much as you can and like the reality that we're living in now. Like I think it's like a really good.

It's a really good reminder and a really good lesson that I think extends beyond psychedelic use. Especially these people, you know, Timothy and Rosemary going around in the people there meeting. How many domino chain effects did they start by just, you know, meeting somebody in one day. I mean, it's kind of funny to think about him running against Ronald Reagan for it's wild. It is kind of funny to think about an alternate universe where he did beat Ronald Reagan. Well, you know what's wild? Talk about like butterfly effects of like a cute butterfly effect. There are like a lot of butterfly effects will never even, just like in terms of the effect of the culture and the music and just like politics. But one cute butterfly effect that's like

tangible is that Rose. So when Leary was running for governor like some like the headlines at the time, The independent newspapers, like the underground newspapers, were totally behind it because they thought it was great. And they were like love for Gov. Like they were all, you know, like those are the slogans. And Leary asked John Lennon, who he was at the bed in with Yoko. Timothy Leary was there and Rosemary was there. And that's like this amazing picture of Rosemary like staring at the camera. And like you never noticed her before.

But there she is in the center of the action. Just fascinating. But they were friendly with John and Yoko. And so when Leary was working on his campaign, he asked John if he would if he would do the, write the campaign song like for him. And Rosemary came up with the slogan, his campaign slogan, which was come together, join the party. Wow. And it became, obviously in very different form, but eventually became come together. That is crazy.

Isn't it? It's wild. Yeah. It's wild. It's wild. And, you know, her lawyer. Could have been a good book title. Come together?

Not bad. Yeah, there's probably a million books. Yeah, I'm sure. Is you pile in my... The acid queen is good. Thank you. Thank you. That's a good title.

I feel like it's pretty good. She's, you know, Alan Ginsburg gave her that title. Really? Yeah. See, they're connected to everybody. Oh my God. I was like, she's a zealic. Like even before she meets Leary, she's like hanging with Jack Kerouac and like, you know,

Miles Davis and the whole jazz scene in New York. I mean, she was like a magnet. And she was really. interesting because, you know, she wasn't a writer or, I mean, she did. She did write, but she was ever published writer. And she wasn't, you know, an actress or a musician. So it's like not the typical subject of a biography. Like what she was was someone behind the scenes, like in a caretaking role, in a support role. And just as you said before, like how many people, how many women have like just gone undocumented or just never get their due? Like, I thought it would be a really interesting

exercise to shift the focus, like almost like if you're thinking about a camera lens, like who's outside of the frame or right at the edge of the frame and kind of shift it onto her. And it was really exciting because like I'd be like, it would be like sleuthing. So I'd be looking at all these newspapers and like, oh, there'd be Rosemary. Like I remember one time I was, I heard a story about the first time she went to Millbrook, the acid commune in upstate New York, that she had a black eye because her, the person she was dating was Alan E. was a kind of a famous saxophonist jazz musician, but he was very abusive. And she was fleeing him,

and Leary kind of came and saved her. And I thought, wow, what a detail, black eye. Like, I was like, is that true? You know, because you're always like trying to suss out of people are exaggerating. And so I found this footage from Canadian broadcasting company. You can find it online. It's called like LSD crisis, you know, it was like when things are to turn against LSD in the mid-60s. And they were interviewing Leary at the Millbrook Estate. And all of a sudden, the camera kind of pans to a room where they're having a session where like all these people are taking LSD and Leary's leading it. And like they pan across this woman's face and it's Rosemary and she has a black eye. And it was, I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it was like mind blowing to all of a sudden

like see her there. And then when I started to dig in the archive, I realized like there was a period of time when she was super famous. Like when they would just say Rosemary in the underground newspapers and people would all know who you were talking about because she became the kind of face of the movement when Leary was in prison. So it was just an amazing auditing. Also, it's just an interesting glimpse into a time where a woman could just be walking around with a black guy and people were like, oh, okay. Not even a comment. Yeah.

Pretty fucked up. So, you know, so, you know, she becomes this like one named media heroine. She helps her husband, Timothy Leary, escape from prison in this like really cinematic, bizarre moment that's like, I mean, I still don't really understand how he was able to do it. But he, he like escapes prison. They go on the run. Wait, how did they escape? How did that? Yeah, I mean, he claims he was able to kind of game the system.

He did a lot of like interpersonal psychology and also like did a lot of testing, like did a lot of like psychological testing before he became involved with psychedelics. So he would write this something called the Leary Circle, which was like a personality assessment in other words, like how you relate to other people. So apparently one of his own personality tests was administered to him while he was in prison. and he was, again, this could be apocryphal story. I think it's true, but it's hard to say. He's so, there's so much mythology wrapped up in him, but let's say it's true. And he was able to present himself as a kind of dottering old man that he was not, you know, he was in his late 50s at the time.

And, you know, he was seen as not a credible threat and not a credible flight risk. So they put him in like a very low security prison, like one of those like, you know, where you go golfing all day. And somehow he managed to like climb up. like barbed wire and over a pole. You know, Rosemary later did express some questions about how easily he was able to get out. Like, like, not at the time,

but later, when she became really aware of like the CIA's involvement with psychedelic research, she started kind of doubting her own version of events, and she started doubting Leary. And so some of her diary entries start, like, questioning some of these things. But taken on face value, he was able to get out. And he escaped. Well, yeah, there's like these theories that Manson was allowed to get off the hook over and over again.

That amazing chaos. Exactly. Yeah, the idea that basically like it would be a way to kill the hippie movement. Exactly. Somebody like that was out making it look bad. And even more maybe preordained. Who knows? But like who know? I don't know. All I know is that Rosemary, I mean, from Rosemary's perspective, he escaped prison and it was above board. She definitely was not involved in like any kind of cover up. But later she questions it. So it's kind of interesting. But anyway, he escapes. They end up reuniting. She ends up putting on this disguise where she's like has a blonde wig. She looks like a June Cleaver, like a 50s housewife. And he shaves his head and looks like a businessman.

And they board a plane to Paris, stay over there for a few days. And then he ends up going to Algeria where the Black Panthers had set up an international headquarters headed by Eldridge Cleaver. And... Sounds amazing. It's just so wild. I mean, again, it's wild. Okay, so she ends up going with him to Algeria. It's an unhappy asylum. Like, it's not a good, happy place because Leary is totally out of touch. And he's like, doesn't have his hearing aids. He had hearing aids. He's talking really loudly. He's doing acid. The Black Panthers who were in Algeria were not about acid at all. Yeah, I was going to say. They're like, really serious young men, like, they were not happy. Algerians were not happy about drugs at all. They had just like, got. They were in a war with France, like 100 years, and they'd gotten their independence.

They were not, they thought that, like, drugs were tools of colonialization. You know, like, they were not into these, this couple. And in fact, when Leary and Rosemary are announced that they're there, the newspapers report them as African-American psychologists. Like, they totally misreport who it was. They call them, you know, a Harvard psychologist. They don't talk about the drugs at all. And then eventually it starts to come out that it is, that it's to me. Leary there and like everyone's unhappy.

Leary starts to fight with Cleaver. Cleaver gets, does acid, has a horrible experience, ends up kidnapping them. And Rosemary and Timothy have to kind of, they're actually kidnapped and taken to a safe house where apparently Cleaver may or may not have killed one of a man who had an affair with his wife. So it was like high, high stakes moment. Yeah. They end up escaping the Black Panthers and going to Switzerland where Leary is arrested again.

And Rosemary has to free him once more by raising money. And at that point, they're at an impasse and they separate. And this is where like the record really goes dark, you know, where it goes blank for me. Because at this point, when they break up, she's like no longer part of the historical record at all. So what happens that I found, you know, reporting this out was that she went underground first in Switzerland. then in Italy, then she's in South and Central America when Timothy starts to cooperate with the feds when he's

arrested in Afghanistan and he's extradited to the United States. And yeah, and then she lives underground. This is crazy. It's wild. It's wild. She lived underground for 24 years. She lived under an assumed name in America. So it's just a story that gets wilder and wilder.

If you're up for it, I would love to talk to you more in a bonus episode. I would love to. Okay, great. That being said, the acid queen is the book you should read if you want to hear more about the life of Rosemary Woodrow Leary. It's out. Where would you like them to go get this book, Susanna? I mean, you know, any place you want, but, you know, an indie would be nice. Go get it from your independent bookstore if you have one near you or, I mean, I'm just happy if you'll read it.

If you'll listen to it, I actually did the audiobook for it. So that'll be awesome. I have two copies of it. Your publisher sent me two on accident. So, you know, if you're one of my friends, you know. Yeah, go get a copy. Who wants an extra copy? And where could people find you, Susanna? Oh, gosh. I'm on Instagram.

And I have a website, Susanna-Kahelan.com. And I actually am going to be at Lilydale this summer. I'm talking at Lilydale about Brain on Fire, actually, experiences, which is headed by Shannon Taggart, who is, I know. a big friend of the podcast. And there's going to be like an amazing. The Lillydale Symposium, you can get your tickets now. Yeah, go there.

It's an amazing roster of people. And I went last year and it was life changing. And I highly recommend if any of these subjects are of interest to you, you will find your people in Lillydale this summer. It's in July. I was supposed to be speaking there myself. Oh, I wish you were. My sister had to go and get married.

Oh, gosh. So sorry to say. I'll be at my only sister's wedding. We have to do it, but fair excuse. It was great to talk to you. I'm going to continue talking to you on a bonus episode, but thank you so much, Susanna, and folks, thank you for listening to Otherworld.

All right. Thank you so much to Susanna Cahelan for joining me. If you want to hear more, I continue to talk to Susanna about her experiences from Brain on Fire, the paranormal, and much, much more on a bonus episode. that's available on the Otherworld Patreon. That's patreon.com slash otherworld. Her new book is called The Acid Queen.

Go check it out. Thank you once again to Susanna Cahelan, and thank you for listening.