Psychedelics Today

In this episode, Joe interviews Imran Khan: Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. Khan shares his journey into the world of science and policymaking, beginning with science journalism and inspired by David Nutt’s famous ‘Equicy’ paper and subsequent firing for telling the truth. Realizing how strong the disconnect was between political and science worlds, his goal became to represent science when it comes under attack; using campaigning, lobbying, advocacy work, etc., and essentially becoming a translator between science and society – bringing these overly complicated concepts down to a level every day culture can understand. At UC Berkeley, he’s focusing on research, training scientists to be better communicators, educating the public on the benefits of psychedelics, and trying to make research more trustworthy. He discusses the word “science” and how it’s used to describe lots of things; the hard problem of consciousness; color constancy, perception, and the influence