The McKenna Brothers: High Weirdness Part 2 episode artwork

EPISODE · Mar 28, 2026 · 1H 22M

The McKenna Brothers: High Weirdness Part 2

from Deep Calls to Deep: Reading Together · host Martin Essig

There's a lot of hype right now about a "Psychedelic Renaissance." Dom and I get into the first two figures of the Book High Weirdness by Eric Davis, the McKenna Brothers, Terence and Denis. There is on the one hand, the scientific desire for certainty, which we associate with third-person, "objective" verifiability. This sort of inquiry and knowing is inline with what modern neurobiology imagines as the evolutionary design of the brain as a "prediction machine." If we are prediction machines, inquiry is for the reduction of uncertainty in order that we might be able to manipulate and control our environment better to our advantage. However, there is on the other hand, the religious desire to encounter the "Other," or that which we cannot reduce to the categories of scientific understanding and which cannot be reduced to a mere projection of our own intention either. The McKenna brothers encapsulate these two competing, perhaps, contradictory drives to make familiar and / or to encounter what is truly other.https://www.martinessig.comBaddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio https://www.jamesreevesco.com

There's a lot of hype right now about a "Psychedelic Renaissance." Dom and I get into the first two figures of the Book High Weirdness by Eric Davis, the McKenna Brothers, Terence and Denis. There is on the one hand, the scientific desire for certainty, which we associate with third-person, "objective" verifiability. This sort of inquiry and knowing is inline with what modern neurobiology imagines as the evolutionary design of the brain as a "prediction machine." If we are prediction machines...

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The McKenna Brothers: High Weirdness Part 2

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This episode was published on March 28, 2026.

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There's a lot of hype right now about a "Psychedelic Renaissance." Dom and I get into the first two figures of the Book High Weirdness by Eric Davis, the McKenna Brothers, Terence and Denis. There is on the one hand, the scientific desire for...

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