Episode 34 - The Importance of Awe
And how cannabis can help you find more of it. A high-minded conversation with Jason Silva, apostle of awe, wonder and flow!
One of my favorite topics is designing our highs to help us have a more childlike view of our increasingly data-driven world. And one of my favorite explorers of this topic is Jason Silva, who one writer called a Timothy Leary for the viral video age. I think of him more as a scholar, a shaman, and a poet. He's less interested in getting high than in using cannabis as a "technology of ecstatic experience." He's part of a new breed of consciousness hackers that includes Michael Pollan, Jamie Wheal, Steven Kotler and millions of adults experimenting with psychedelics, microdosing, and meditation to reveal "a bigger, wider, more far-reaching universe that goes beyond what the eye can see.”
Silva a former host on Al Gore's now defunct Current TV and current host of NatGeo's Brain Games, he makes a living traveling the globe preaching about the value of injecting more awe, rapture and surprise into our lives. He's a cultural nomad, living between NYC, SF Miami, and somewhere way out there in space.
His smashcut videos look and sound as if he’s live streaming his consciousness onto the screen. He doesn't write a script -- he channels -- and it's mesmerizing. You’ll hear it in this interview: he doesn’t speak in sentences. Paragraphs of seriously coherent, large chunks of thought peppered with relevant quotes from other thinkers pour from his mouth. It’s pure freestyle flow, he says, accessed through cannabis.
If you don't know Jason, let this serve as an introduction. Start with this video “Why You Need Awe”, read this blog “Hacking the Tripping Mind: A Fantastic Voyage Through Inner Space.” and listen to him by tuning into this podcast.