The Troubled Legacy of Timothy Leary and Harvard’s New Interdisciplinary Science & Research into Psychedelics with Patrick Schmidt

In this episode, I have the great pleasure to speak with Attorney and Author Patrick Schmidt about his book "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science" and his research into Harvard’s Interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations alongside the effects and repercussions of Timothy Leary’s psychological and social experiments with psychedelics that eventually brought down the department. Moreover, Patrick provides details and background information about Henry Murray’s controversial and questionable experiment that traumatized a young Ted Kaczynski who later become known as the Unabomber.

We also look at the current research undertaken regarding psychedelics both at Harvard with the New Center for Neuroscience of Psychedelics at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as well as Berkely with BCSP, the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics research and training facilitation program and how these approaches differ from the previously attempted but failed Department of Social Relations. Moreover, we talk about the stigma associated with psychedelic drugs as well as their potential and beneficial therapeutic use as evidenced in the work of Michael Pollan and the Netflix documentary “How to Change Your Mind”.

Finally, we discuss the difficulties and challenges of a truly interdisciplinary as opposed to a multi-disciplinary approach and how it could be organized and structured in university settings as well as the many gains and benefits it has brought about and could bring about in the future.