This panel will illuminate the cultural significance of the Hopkins/NYU study and how its results might inform views on psychedelics, religions, & entanglements between them.

Hosted by the GTU in collab w/Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics & Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion.

In a panel at the GTU (Berkeley) on June 11, Pollan will engage in discussion with Zac Kamenetz, who participated in the Hopkins/NYU study; anthropologist Aidan Seale-Feldman; anthropologist Bia Labate; and neuroscientist Michael Silver. Scholar of religion Sam Shonkoff will moderate.

Publication of the scientific article from the Hopkins/NYU study was stalled for years. On May 19, Michael Pollan published his own article in The New Yorker about the study, its contexts, & its controversies. Then, the scientific article finally appeared on May 30 in _Psychedelic Science_.

The team sought to replicate/improve upon the 1962 “Good Friday Experiment.” Both studies asked: What happens when you give psilocybin to seasoned religious practitioners from traditions that don’t normally use psychedelics? Are they somehow primed? Do psychedelics change their religious outlooks?

Entanglements between psychedelics and religion are nothing new. However, we now find ourselves at an intriguing moment in that history. Nearly a decade ago, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins & NYU observed the effects of psilocybin on dozens of religious leaders from various traditions.