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Guest speaker: Timothy Leary
PROGRAM NOTES:
Dates when these interviews were recorded: 1973 and 1992.
[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]
“The best philosophers often end up in prison. … Most of the men that I model myself after have been lucky if they just got away with being in prison for their ideas.”
“I have no more to do with drugs that Einstein has to do with the atomic bomb.”
“I based my entire life on Socrates. He’s the guy that caused all the troubles in history. His motto was, ‘The aim of human life is to know thyself.’ And this is very subversive.”
“As soon as I studied books about Socrates, I realized that [philosophy] is a dangerous profession because you’re teaching people to question authority. I realized that this job which I was going to undertake, the corrupting of the minds of youth, pays poorly, it gets you in serious difficulty with authorities.”
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Jeez . . . what patience Tim had with this ill-informed, apparently illiterate “interviewer”. Martin Short’s character was genuinely funny. This guy is clearly just an idiot.
In any case, thank you Lorenzo for bringing these interviews forward. Leary was such an brilliant, creative force and, in the case of this interview, an amazingly tolerant person. I just don’t seem to have sufficient capacity for humor to find this “Skip E” character amusing. Tim was very generous in giving time to him. I sent my TV to be recycled several years ago. This guy is a good example why.
I still have Tim’s program “Mind Mirror” on 5 1/4″ discs – a program fading into history along with its creator. Thanks Lorenzo for your good work.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: I certainly understand what you are saying, and you are correct about the wonderful way in which Dr. Leary handled this interview. One of the things that we may be missing, however, is the IMMENSE popularity of Skip-E at the time. Almost everyone who was anyone wanted to be on his show, which ran for many, many years on Hollywood’s public access channel. Therein, I believe, lies the underlying reason that Timothy was so good-natured. On YouTube there is a video of an interview that Skip-E did with Rip Taylor that will give you a little better understanding of the draw that he had at that time.]
Regarding Socrates, it would be well for the psychedelic community to read Plato’s Republic.
Hope you’re doing well Lorenzo. I found your podcast about 2 months ago and have been listening to it ever since every night on third shift. I’m in the old stuff now, really just focusing on McKenna lectures, so I have probably missed any announcement about this, but I wanted to let you know I badly wanted to access the amazon store, and can’t. Regardless, thanks for all you do.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: I dropped my Amazon store several years ago. It was more work than it returned. But thanks for thinking of us.]