PicoBlog

Nobody reads. But if nobody reads -- how are you reading this? It's not subtitles on your television or captions on your TikTok feed. Is it possible you, too, love the printed word as much as your writer? If so, my next question: how much do you love the printed word? The incomparable Wright Thompson dropped an atomic bomb of a piece for ESPN on Wednesday about the last four years of Caitlin Clark at Iowa (and oh-so much more).

Professionals across the world, across industries and across all levels (but particularly middle to senior executive levels) are grappling with the issue of relevance. 1)    Are our businesses and business models relevant? 2)    Are our organizational designs, incentive plans, and talent relevant? 3)    Are our partners, suppliers, and the way we tap into external resources relevant? 4)    Are our positions and roles relevant? 5)    Are WE still relevant? While we may give voice to the first three there is no doubt we are also concerned about our own roles and our own capabilities.

Swiftian discourse has reached a fever pitch. But even if you’re not a Swiftie, even if you’re weary of Tayvis speculation, even if you feel like you might explode if you hear Cruel Summer even one more time, I promise that the following links will give you renewed insight into whiteness, straightness, girls (both good and bad), environmentalism, capitalism, and the power of marketing. Because here’s the thing about making meaning from cultural criticism - even if the apparent focus of that criticism is one individual - and even if the subject is one individual over and over again - the lens can always be changed, swapped, or tweaked to help us see a celebrity or the world she inhabits a little more clearly.

Religious freedom is a foundation principle of the United States, a concept enshrined in the  U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Here, church and state are separate, which prohibits the federal government from interfering in Americans’ religious practices. But as hundreds of religious groups in the U.S. have claimed psychedelics as sacraments, the country’s drug laws have at times interfered with groups’ ability to obtain and use what they consider to be essential parts of their religion, including substances like peyote and ayahuasca.

When Rick Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, in 1986, the psychedelics world looked quite different. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had just added MDMA to its list of Schedule I drugs, making the substance illegal. Doblin’s mission was to create an organization that would pioneer studies demonstrating the therapeutic uses of MDMA. Over the last thirty-odd years, MAPS has sponsored clinical trials investigating the use of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and supported trials with ketamine, psilocybin, marijuana, and LSD.

If you’ve ever listened to someone describe their experiences on psychedelics, there’s a good chance you heard about feelings of connectedness with the universe, or transcending time and space. These are part of what researchers call “mystical experience,” and some studies suggest this type of feeling can produce profound and lasting effects in people. In the resurgence of psychedelic research over the last decade and a half, many researchers have measured mystical experiences in participants by asking them to answer a written survey called the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, or MEQ.

As a teenager in the 1990s, Kelan Thomas started reading Aldous Huxley. The novelist is credited with helping to coin the term “psychedelic,” and his books and essays asked big questions about mysticism, dystopia, and perception. Thomas went on to study pharmacogenetics, a field that investigates how genetics influence drug response. He’s now an associate professor of pharmacy sciences at Touro University in Vallejo, California.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are among the most popular prescription drugs in the U.

Once known as the “acid king,” William Leonard Pickard is entering his seventh decade in the psychedelics scene. A gifted high school science student, Pickard earned a scholarship to Princeton in the 1960s, but dropped out after a semester. By some accounts, this was the time period during which Pickard began dabbling in manufacturing drugs like LSD and MDA, an MDMA analog. In the 1970s, Pickard went back to school, studying chemistry at Foothill College and then San Jose State.

know someone who might enjoy my work? share with a friend! Share On Saturday, 11/11, I celebrated 5 years of sobriety from alcohol. It was a quiet day. I walked to the farmer’s market, which has become an important part of my week. I got a small lunch and a cookie and walked back home. I struggled a bit with lament that I don’t seem to know how to mark the years anymore, but also the tender awareness of how much I should be grateful that this is just a normal part of my life.