I preordered your book and just finished it at lunch today. It is absolutely fascinating and eye opening. You have given us a great corrective for the narrow view that focuses almost entirely on MKUltra and then Timothy Leary. The connections you make, and the ones that seem implicit in the story, are enough to preoccupy the serious reader for some time. Bateson has been an intellectual hero since my undergraduate days. This fleshes out so much I did not know. I know this is one I will reread. Thank you for this book.
Since you seem into weird things: do you ever talk to people about Utopia? I do now and then and have found that everyone I mention it to, including people like humanists and advocates for positive change in general, seem to have a strange, innate aversion to it. The specific reactions vary (laughter, mocking, changing of the subject, story telling in general), but one thing is common: they won't discuss it seriously, almost like there is some sort of a block installed in every person's mind.
Perhaps I am imagining this, but I'm curious what your experience has been, or if you'd be willing to try running some experiments on people you know to see what happens.
It's fun to think about how timing and Margaret's self-preserving decision may very well have changed the course of history. This simulation keeps getting interestinger and interestinger...
Belated congratulations on the book and the interview! I look forward to listening to it. Currently re-surfacing from my own deadlines for a couple of days before re-entry into the final, fourth draft of my own manuscript.
Carching up on old newsletters and for those of us who grew up in the Philadelphia area in the 1980s and 1990s a Terry Gross interview is probably the highest honor I can imagine. Can you say more about what that process was like up close?
I preordered your book and just finished it at lunch today. It is absolutely fascinating and eye opening. You have given us a great corrective for the narrow view that focuses almost entirely on MKUltra and then Timothy Leary. The connections you make, and the ones that seem implicit in the story, are enough to preoccupy the serious reader for some time. Bateson has been an intellectual hero since my undergraduate days. This fleshes out so much I did not know. I know this is one I will reread. Thank you for this book.
Very kind of you to say. This is exactly what I was going for - thank you!
Since you seem into weird things: do you ever talk to people about Utopia? I do now and then and have found that everyone I mention it to, including people like humanists and advocates for positive change in general, seem to have a strange, innate aversion to it. The specific reactions vary (laughter, mocking, changing of the subject, story telling in general), but one thing is common: they won't discuss it seriously, almost like there is some sort of a block installed in every person's mind.
Perhaps I am imagining this, but I'm curious what your experience has been, or if you'd be willing to try running some experiments on people you know to see what happens.
It's fun to think about how timing and Margaret's self-preserving decision may very well have changed the course of history. This simulation keeps getting interestinger and interestinger...
Belated congratulations on the book and the interview! I look forward to listening to it. Currently re-surfacing from my own deadlines for a couple of days before re-entry into the final, fourth draft of my own manuscript.
Carching up on old newsletters and for those of us who grew up in the Philadelphia area in the 1980s and 1990s a Terry Gross interview is probably the highest honor I can imagine. Can you say more about what that process was like up close?
Many congrats Ben, this is tremendous and well-deserved!!