This is one of the most fun and wide-ranging conversations I’ve had on Furthure in a while — and one of the weirder ones. Dr. David Luke, author of Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience, investigates everything from how psychedelics may increase the odds of ESP-like experiences and paranormal beliefs to how people cope with existential distress after challenging psychedelic experiences. He has also been his own “guinea pig” for science, let’s just say, and isn’t afraid to tell us the tale.

Even though studying the ESP phenomenon with psychedelics might seem a bit out there — maybe unicorn-dimension-level weird — there’s no denying that there are strong roots in the history of the field for studying this, with everyone from serious scientists in the 1950s to indigenous traditions entwined with it.