Erik Davis' new book 'High Weirdness' explores how 3 authors in the 1970s changed the way readers ex

Alright, here we go and it's time to get a little weird, if you don't mind, a new

book

explores

the strange history of the 70s counterculture and psychedelic spiritual movements on the West Coast. The

book

is aptly titled Esoteric Drugs of High Rarity and Visionary Experience in the 70s the author Eric Davis is a journalist and expert on the counterculture of the 70s hello Eric, good zir, did you become an expert by eating a lot of mushrooms? Well, it didn't hurt. I grew up in Southern California in a coastal town in the You know, the aftermath of the counterculture and I was always into this stuff.

You know, I went to dead shows and met Zen priests and Hari Krishna and the whole range of experiences, and that period that shaped me personally I've always been totally fascinated by, so it was great to be able to dive back in and try to figure out what was happening at that time. See writing a large book, the big book. It's good that you're back to feed your passion for this. Well, I just said that I was really inspired by these experiences when I was young and I felt like there was something missing in our kind of memory of the

1970s

and when we think of the counterculture we think of the '60s, the Summer of Love. great students, you know the student movements, the social movements, but something went weird around 1970, 1971, but they still have this, you know, a very significant countercultural flow throughout the

1970s

, but people are looking for new meanings, they are coming.

With new religious movements, they're following gurus, and in the case of these guys, they're exploring psychedelics and visionary experiences, you know, as far as they can go, because there's a sense that, well, this previous experiment didn't work. look what else is around the corner you mentioned these guys you're talking about philip k dick Terence Mckenna and Robert Anton Wilson why did you focus on those guys and what are their contributions? I'm sure the reason I focus on these guys is that they all Yes, they all had extraordinary visionary experiences in the 1970s, two of them because they were taking psychedelics as far as they could go.

He took and took everything in every sense of the word, absolutely and with Philip K Dick, who is probably the best. I know the science fiction writer who wrote the book on which they based the movie Blade Runner and made many movies based on science fiction from it. It was more unnatural, as you could say, but everyone had these extraordinary experiences that were like mixtures. of religious experience and psychosis and science fiction and exploring those connections between these things and trying to figure out what happens, how do we talk about the things that happen to people who are crazy paranormal visionaries out of the ordinary and who they end because they wrote? texts in which they wrote these great books based on their experiences, we could really go very deep and get closer to the essence of what an extraordinary experience means, especially in this crazy period, so here we are decades later, now in 2019, how do you think you think what? they kind of helped shake off when you call them books seismic cultural shifts that are taking place today why there are two things: one is that right now there is a renaissance of psychedelics, suddenly it's me, it's their mantra, they're basically back on the mainstream in terms of interests. in its healing powers, more and more people are turning to ayahuasca, which is a very powerful psychedelic, yes, and people have basically become a popular thing, everyone knows about Burning Man, which is a very psychedelic type of festival, so there is something very contemporary. about a lot of these things, but I also think we live in very strange times and they're getting stranger and then in many ways the things that happened in the '70s look forward to some of the things we're struggling with today, how are you?

The fact that on the West Coast we've been at the forefront of this whole movement, absolutely not, I mean, the West Coast is really where psychedelic culture in the modern sense emerged. You know, before that, so you know the scattered indigenous cultures. around the world, but in terms of the modern world, it really starts in California and continues along the entire west coast, actually in Saskatchewan and in British Columbia, in terms of people using a force like psychotherapeutic effects, but they also explore their meanings and the construction of new cultures from these experiences definitely says "I'll get you" of what's happening there, it's true, it's funny, although that's the masculine, you know, swears they were.

Aldous Huxley got mescaline from him, he wrote the doors of perception of that from those guys. What we learned from this book that we have to ask you about is that there is a connection that you mention between Playboy magazine and a conspiracy culture. Yeah, it's pretty funny when Robert Anton Wilson actually worked for Playboy in the late 1960s and he added that kind of letters section. where there was a lot of politics, a lot of people were talking about civil liberties, but they got all these letters that were conspiracy theories, basically, you know, they're people from the John Birch Society who worry about the government opening their mail, you know, and the rumors about the Illuminati and things like this and the editors were fascinated with this material so what they said is, hey, let's write a book where all these conspiracies that we're getting are true at the same time and that book became your Keep in mind which yeah, well that book became a really significant feature in the growth of the entertainment factor of conspiracy culture which of course I don't need to tell you is a big part of our contemporary moment and it's definitely happening as well Since this is a big book with a lot of words, what does the average reader want?

What do you want them to take away from this book? That the worlds of human experience go further than we normally believe and that you really can come back from them with some good stories to tell. Okay, what's your current favorite part of this book? There is a favorite part of the moment that I like. I like the beginning where I talk about the history of the word weird. You know, it's a term we use all the time. I know that, oh, I had a weird time and it's that they didn't use that word in the '40s and the third, no one uses that word not so much, not so much, but it's a really important part of our world today, it's a word strange, it's a strange word, will you be available to talk all about this book?

Yes, yes, you discuss it and sign copies of Hello Weirdness. You'll get Eric's autograph tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Forum in Seattle, it's even hosted by the Seattle City Council. here it is good thanks ex