You may have heard about the pioneering research of anthropologist Margaret Mead, but do you know about her work with psychedelics? Mead and her husband, Gregory Bateson, thought psychedelics might reshape humanity by expanding consciousness. We'll speak with author Benjamin Breen about that research and how it led to the CIA's secret experiments in the '50s and '60s, using psychedelics in interrogation. He also shares with us details about a NASA-funded experiment to try to get dolphins to talk by giving them LSD. His book is Tripping on Utopia. Also, John Powers reviews the Apple TV+ series Criminal Record. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the TEd radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
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This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tanya Moseley.
Terry Gross has a few days off, but recently she recorded this interview about psychedelic science, the use of mind altering substances as a therapeutic tool or a way to expand consciousness.
Here's Terry.
Psychedelic science began much earlier than you may think, back in the 1920s and thirties.
At the center of that research was Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, and her third husband Gregory Bateson, one of the most controversial anthropologists of his time.
That early history is covered in the new book by my guest Benjamin Breen.
He writes about Meade and Bateson's early utopian oriented research.
Then how during World War Two, they worked on a team using hypnosis and mind altering drugs in an attempt to defeat Hitler and fascism.
The CIA's secret psychedelic experiments of the fifties and sixties and how all this connects to the counterculture of the sixties, which popularized LSD, mescaline, and magic mushrooms.
Breen goes down lots of interesting side roads along the way.
For example, NASA funded an experiment giving psychedelics to dolphins in an attempt to teach them to speak.
One of those dolphins appeared on the tv show Flipper.
Breen's new book is called tripping on Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the troubled birth of psychedelic science.
His previous book, the Age of Origins of the Global Drug Trade, won a medal in 2021 from the American association for the History of Medicine.