The discussion shifts to McKenna's theory of novelty, which holds that the universe is a system that produces and conserves increasing complexity over time. He draws parallels between Art's concept of "the quickening" and his own notion of concrescence, both pointing toward an accelerating series of climactic transformations in human civilization. McKenna cites the Italian Renaissance and the Greek Enlightenment as historical spikes of concentrated novelty.
Persistent power outages throughout the broadcast provide an unintended demonstration of technological fragility as the two discuss Y2K preparedness. McKenna advises listeners in dense urban areas to consider temporary relocation, estimating roughly 72 hours of social breakdown before systems could be restored.
Key Moments
Why psychedelics drive creativity: dissolving boundaries: McKenna answers Art's question about why so many breakthrough artists and scientists - Coleridge writing Kublai Khan on opium, the dream that revealed the benzene ring - did their best work in altered states. His thesis: these substances 'dissolve boundaries,' and most of the cages we live in are made of habit and convention. Artists are antennas into the future, and bohemians have always been associated with drug use for that reason.
Drug prohibition is a racket and drugs built civilization: McKenna argues drug suppression should be filed alongside racism and aerial bombing of civilians as a 20th-century failure that the 21st century must end. He says the prison industry, rehab industry, criminal syndicates, bought-off cops and judges all profit from the present mess. Then he reframes history: sugar, tobacco, alcohol, opium, tea, chocolate, and coffee are the drugs that built Western civilization. We just call the ones we like 'foods.'
Psychedelics caused the evolution of human language: McKenna lays out his bigger evolutionary claim: complex human culture, including language itself, was caused by 'brain perturbations' in early hominids around 150,000 years ago - unusual states of consciousness, almost certainly chemically induced, that were eventually assimilated into the standard behavioral toolkit. Evolution by psychedelic, and a continuing process, not a finished one.
The Mayan calendar, 2012, and the galactic alignment: Responding to a caller from Boulder, McKenna explains the meaning of the end of the 13th Bakhtun in 2012: the Maya pegged it to the heliacal rising of the winter solstice sun against the galactic center, a 26,000-year processional alignment. Their own surviving texts suggest they saw it not as the end of the world but as the first moments of true creation - an era of perfection, like Revelation's millennium.
Set, setting, and who should never take psychedelics: Asked why psychedelics liberate some people and shatter others, McKenna invokes Leary's old distinction of set and setting and adds his own caveat: roughly two or three percent of the population is psychologically invested in maintaining boundaries rather than dissolving them, and those people should stay away. The drugs are not for everyone, and treating them with reasonable respect is most of the answer.