24. the escalating rate of suicide: Sally Curtin, Margaret Warner, and Holly Hedegaard, “Increases in Suicide in the United States, 1999–2014,” NCHS Data Brief No. 241, April 2016, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db241.htm.
25. We could get on a treadmill: The data on this one is pretty overwhelming. For a solid overview see John Ratey and Eric Hagerman, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (New York: Little, Brown, 2013).
26. get some natural sunshine: Michael Holick, “Vitamin D Deficiency,” New England Journal of Medicine 357 (2007): 266–81.
27. practice meditation for fifteen minutes: Jennifer Haythornthwaite et al., “Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” JAMA Internal Medicine 174, no. 3 (2014): 357–68.
28. Tibetan monks can shut off: Judson Brewer et al., “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Difference in Default Mode Network Activity and Connectivity,” PNAS 108, no. 50 (December 13, 2011): 20254–59.
29. SEAL snipers tune their brainwaves to the alpha frequency: This comes from work done by Chris Berka and her team at Advanced Brain Monitoring. Berka gave a great TED talk about the work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBt7LMrIkxg.
30. Extreme athletes smooth out their heart rhythms: Author interview with Michael Gervais, 2016. A high-performance psychologist, Gervais was describing research done with Red Bull surfers.
31. “To diagnose . . . yourself while in the midst of action”: Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Gradshow, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), p. 7.
Chapter Six: Pharmacology
1. They were hanging around with their noses:” Fiona Keating, “Dolphins Get High on a Diet of Toxic Fish,” International Business Times, December 29, 2013.
2. Headlines like: Christie Wilcox, ”Do Stoned Dolphins Give ‘Puff Puff Pass’ a Whole New Meaning?,” Discover, December 30, 2013, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/2013/12/30/stoned-dolphins-give-puff-puff-pass-whole-new-meaning/#.V_FInTKZNyo.
3. Psychopharmacologists have spent the past few decades: Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1989), p. 11
4. drug seeking and drug taking: Ibid., p. 99.
5. The carcasses of drunken birds: Ibid., p. 251.
6. The principle of conservation: Giorgio Samoroni, Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2002), p. 86.
7. “evolved to gratify our desires”: Michael Pollan, ”Cannabis, Forgetting and the Botany of Desire,” Occasional Papers of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, no. 27 (2002).
8. “curiously, promote one plant”: Ibid.
9. when Franciscan priests arrived in Mexico: Daniel Gade, Spell of the Urubamba: Anthropogeographical Essays on an Andean Valley in Space and Time (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015), p. 208.
10. In Prohibition America: Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 9.
11. Wired dubbed him “Professor X”: Ethan Brown, “Professor X,” Wired, September 1, 2002.
12. the New York Times preferred “Dr. Ecstasy”: Drake Bennett, “Dr. Ecstasy,” New York Times, January 30, 2005.
13. “Gandalf” was not uncommon: Brian Vastag, “Chemist Alexander Shulgin, Popularizer of the Drug Ecstasy, Dies at 88,” Washington Post, June 3, 2014.
14. Sasha Shulgin was born in Berkeley: For a great introduction to Shulgin’s life, see the recent documentary Dirty Pictures, by Etienne Sauret, 2010.
15. “I learned there were worlds inside of me”: James Oroc, “The Second Psychedelic Revolution Part Two: Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin, The Psychedelic Godfather,” Reality Sandwich, 2014, http://realitysandwich.com/217250/second-psychedelic-revolution-part-two/.
16. Sasha’s interest,” explains Johns Hopkins: Ibid.
17. The Shulgin Rating Scale: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulgin_Rating_Scale.
18. At 22 milligrams: Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Berkeley, CA: Transform Press, 1991), p. 560.
19. Richard Meyers, a spokesperson for the DEA: Bennett, ”Dr. Ecstasy.”
20. Everybody knows who the Shulgins: Teafaire, “No Retirement Plan for Wizards,” teafaire.org, February 28, 2013, http://teafaerie.org/2013/02/456/.
21. Carhart-Harris didn’t start out: Author interview with Robin Carhart-Harris, 2016.
22. the neurological impact of psilocybin: R. L. Carhart-Harris et al., “Implications for a Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study with Psilocybin,” British Journal of Psychiatry 200 (2012): 238–44.
23. And the very first to explore LSD: Robin Carhart-Harris et al., “Neurol Correlates of the LSD Experience Revealed by Multimodal Imaging,” PNAS 113, no. 17 (2016): 4853–58.
24. This is to neuroscience what the Higgs: Ian Sample, “LSD’s Impact on the Brain Revealed in Groundbreaking Images,” Guardian, April 11, 2016.
25. named Joseph Smith: For a great biography of Joseph Smith, see Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage, 2007).
26. “[S]ome people can reach transcendent”: Oliver Sacks, “Altered States: Self-Experiments in Chemistry,” New Yorker, August 27, 2012.
27. Referring to Erowid: Erik Davis, “Don’t Get High Without It,” LA Weekly, April 29, 2004.
28. Take, for example, psychiatrist Rick Strassman’s: Rick Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2001).
29. “I had over twenty years in experience”: Alex Tsakiris, “Dr. Rick Strassman on Whether Psychedelic Drugs Prove We Are More than Our Brain,” Skeptico.com, March 25, 2016. This is a podcast: http://skeptiko.com/rick-strassman-psychedelic-drugs-prove-we-are-more-than-our-brain/.
30. The Lexicon is packed with neologisms: See https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Hyperspace_lexicon.
31. In 2010, chemist Lee Cronin: Author interview with Lee Cronin, 2016.
32. In August 2014, researchers at Stanford: Lexi Pandell, “Don’t Try This at Home: Scientists Brew Opiates with Yeast,” Wired, August 13, 2015.
33. The Canadian company HyaSynth Bio: Tracey Lindeman, “HyaSynth Bio Working to Mimic Medical Effects of Pot in Yeast,” Montreal Gazette, June 29, 2015. Also see http://hyasynthbio.com.
34. This is really just the beginning: Author interview with Andrew Hessel, 2016.
Chapter Seven: Technology
1. For Dean Potter: For a deeper look at Dean’s last flight, see Daniel Duane, “The Last Flight of Dean Potter,” mensjournal.com, http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/the-last-flight-of-dean-potter-20150522. Also, Grayson Schaffer, “Dean Potter Killed in BASE-Jumping Accident,” Outside, May 17, 2015.
2. “the Rise of Superman video series”: If you’d like to view the entire six-part series, see http://www.flowgenomeproject.com/learn/videos/video-archive/.
3. “I know the dark secret”: All the interviews with Dean were conducted between 2012 and 2015. There were many.
4. Steph Davis: Steph wrote a very powerful blog about her first husband’s passing and her getting back in the air, See http://stephdavis.co/blog/dealing-with-death/ifly.
5. Thanks to innovators like Alan Metni: Author interview with Alan Metni, 2016.
6. Today, iFly: See author interview with Alan Metni, 2016, https://www.iflyworld.com.
7. Tony Andrews has been messing with your mind: For a really good overview of Andrew’s life and his approach to sound and consciousness, he gave a comprehensive interview with Mondo dr that is now available in PDF form from Funktionone.com, http://www.funktion-one.com/dl/files/Tony%20Interview.pdf.
8. “I was feeling all this electricity”: Tony Andrews, “Audio and Consciousness,” a live interview conducted at PLASA London 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3RPJ8njrCY.
9. a common place to exp
and their minds: Ibid.
10. While studying the Arcy-sur-Cure caves: Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Changed the Modern World (New York: Riverhead, 2015) and “Sound,” PBS: How We Got to Now, November 12, 2014.
11. “Reznikoff’s theory”: Ibid., p. 88.
12. In Greece, churches: For an introduction to this work, see Josh Jones, “Mapping the Sounds of Greek Byzantine Churches: How Researchers Are Creating ‘Museums of Lost Sound,’” Openculture.com, March 9, 2016.
13. In France, the Gothic arches of Notre Dame and Chartes: Kurt Blaukopf, Musical Life in a Changing Society: Aspects of Music Sociology (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1982), pp. 180–82.
14. [I]n all societies,” explains neurologist Oliver Sacks: Oliver Sacks, “The Power of Music,” Brain, September 25, 2006, pp. 2528–32, http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/129/10/2528.
15. The burgeoning field of neuro-musicology: There’s a ton of good information here, but three solid places to start are Roberrt Jourdain, Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination (New York: William Morrow, 2008); Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music (New York: Plume/Penguin, 2007); Jonah Lehrer, “The Neuroscience of Music,” Wired, January 19, 2011.
16. Apple and the speaker manufacturer Sonos: Fast Company published an excellent overview of this research: John Paul Titlow, “How Music Changes Your Behavior at Home,” Fast Company, February 10, 2016. Also see Mikey Campbell, “Apple Music and Sonos Launch a Collaborative Ad Campaign Touting the Benefits of Music,” Appleinsider.com, February 10, 2016.
17. About forty-five years ago: Tony Andrews, Boom Festival, May 8, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xh6iZzMbk.
18. “What we’re building in the Dance Temple”: This was told to us by Android Jones in 2016.
19. Jones has established himself: The majority of the content in this section stems from a series of author interviews in 2016. For a good bio, Jones’s website is the place to start: http://androidjones.com/about/bio/. If you want to go deeper, Jones has given a number of interesting interviews, such as “An Interview with Android Jones, the Digital Alchemist,” Fractal Enlightenment, https://fractalenlightenment.com/35635/artwork/an-interview-with-android-jones-the-digital-alchemist.
20. On the Sydney Opera House: You can see a video of the entire performance at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ClOq0Wtkg.
21. In 2011, Mikey Siegel: Author interview with Mikey Siegel, 2016. Also, for an introduction to his work, see Mikey Siegel, “Enlightenment Engineering,” TEDx Santa Cruz, May 1, 2014.
22. Consciousness Hacking: See http://www.cohack.life. Also see Noah Nelson, “Silicon Valley’s Next Big Hack? Consciousness Itself,” Huffington Post, March 3, 2015.
23. ’Transformative Technology Conference: Siegel cofounded this conference with Dr. Jeffery Martin and Nicole Bradford. See: http://www.ttconf.org. Also Angela Swartz, ”Meet the Transformative Technology Companies That Want to Help You Relax,” Bizjournals.com, October 5, 2015.
24. A feature in The New Yorker: Nellie Bowles, “An evening with the Consciousness Hackers,” New Yorker, June 23, 2015.
25. The Flow Dojo: For an overview: http://www.flowgenomeproject.com/train/flow-dojo/.
26. A prototype of the Dojo to Google’s: If you want to see what all this looks like, see https://vimeo.com/153320792.
Chapter Eight: Catch A Fire
1. Burning Man aggressively extends the tradition of hedonic ecstasy: Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen, ed., AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
2. Michael Michaels’: San Mateo City Innovation Week Panel discussion on the role of Burning Man in Silicon Valley culture, 2014, excerpt at https://vimeo.com/164357369 and entirety https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0yKsy-mWec.
3. You sink to your level of training: This quote is frequently attributed to an anonymous Navy SEAL (and often repeated by team members), but it most likely originated with the Greek poet Archilochus. “If you haven’t been [to Burning Man]’”: Nellie Bowles, “At HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Premiere, Elon Musk Has Some Notes,” ReCode, April 3, 2014.
4. “So embedded, so accepted has Burning Man become”: Vanessa Hua, “Burning Man,” SFGate, August 20, 2000.
5. In 2013, John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School: @JPBarlow, Twitter.
6. Three years later, the actual president: “Just recently, a young person came up to me and said she was sick of politicians standing in the way of her dreams—as if we were actually going to let Malia go to Burning Man this year. Was not going to happen. Bernie might have let her go. Not us.” White House Correspondents Association’ Dinner, April 30, 2016, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4591479/obama-drops-burning-man-joke.
7. In 2015, a team of scientists led by Oxford’s Molly Crockett: Author interview May 12, 2016, and Burning Man Journal, http://journal.burningman.org/2016/05/black-rock-city/survive-and-thrive/researchers-share-first-findings-on-burners-transformative-experiences.
8. all combine to create a temporary autonomous zone: Hakim Bey, “The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism,” http://hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html, anti-copyright, 1985, 1991.
9. “I like going to Burning Man”: Will Oremus, “Google CEO Is Tired of Rivals, Laws, Wants to Start His Own Country,” Slate, May 15, 2013.
10. In 2007, Elon Musk did just that: Gregory Ferenstein, “Burning Man Founder Is Cool with Capitalism, and Silicon Valley Billionaires,” TechCrunch, September 3, 2013.
11. He also came up with the ideas: Sarah Buhr, “Elon Musk Is Right, Burning Man Is Silicon Valley,” TechCrunch, September 4, 2004; Ferenstein, “Burning Man Founder Is Cool with Capitalism, and Silicon Valley Billionaires.”
12. Zappos founder and CEO Tony Hsieh: David Hochman, “Playboy Interview: Tony Hsieh,” Playboy, April 2014.
13. While much has been made of the fact’: Zack Guzman, “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Shares What He Would Have Changed About his $350M Downtown Las Vegas Project,” CNBC, August 9, 2016, and Jennifer Reingold, “How a Radical Shift Left Zappos Reeling,” Fortune, March 4, 2016.
14. As Burning Man cofounder Will Roger: Nellie Bowles, “Is Burning Man on the Cusp of Becoming a Permanent Utopian Community?,” New York August 30, 2015.
15. This is all part of the evolution of Burning Man: “We Bought Fly Ranch,” Burning Man Journal, June 10, 2016.
16. By the time the storm was over, it would spread $108 billion of damage: Mitigation Assessment Team Report, Federal Emergency Management Agency, https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1909-25045-8823/isaac_mat_ch1.pdf, p. 4.
17. “One of our guys took over a recon satellite”: Bruce Damer interview, Joe Rogan Experience podcast, episode 561, October 14, 2014.
18. With Doctors without Borders as their inspiration: Daniel Terdiman, “Burn on the Bayou’ Showcases Burning Man Participants’ post-Katrina Relief Efforts,” CNET, March 24, 2008. Additional resources are the film Burn on the Bayou, Black Rock City LLC, 2008, and the organization’s website, www.burnerswithoutborders.org.
19. Warner has a resume: Brian Calvert, “The Merry Pranksters Who Hacked the Afghan War,” Pacific Standard, July 1, 2013. Dave Warner is a fascinating character, brilliant, iconoclastic, and highly productive. See also Andreas Tzortzis, “Learning Man,” Red Bull Bulletin, August 2014.
20. “I’m dismantling the Death Star”: Ibid.
21. With so much experience in self-organizing”: Peter Hirshberg, From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond ([N.p.]: Off the Common Books, 2014).
22. It’s for this reason that Rosie von Lila: Author interview with Rosie von Lila, July 25, 2016.
23. Burning Man demonstration projects”: Washoe Tribe installing solar panels at seven sites,” Record-Courier, June 8, 2015; “Stained Glass ‘Space Whale’ to Blow Minds at Burning Man,” Reno-Gazette Journal, November 13, 2015; “How a Chat App for Burning Man Turned into a Tool for Revolution,” AdWeek,
March 25, 2015.
24. Burning Man didn’t invent the festival: Hirshberg, From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond.
25. In Europe, we saw this: Jonathon Green, Cannabis (New York: Pavilion Press, 2002).
26. In the 1920’s socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Taos home: Lois Palken Rudnick, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
27. In the 1960’s Esalen’s founders and faculty: Jeffrey Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
28. The power of shared peak experiences: See http://future.summit.co
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