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.
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.
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