Psychedelic Raconteur
A botanist of strange ideas, weaving plants, language and culture into excursions beyond the familiar. A singular voice at the edge of the map.
Ethnobotanist & Psychedelic Raconteur
Born in Paonia, Colorado, Terence McKenna became a collector of natural curiosities. Insects, books and unfamiliar ideas would remain companions throughout his life.
McKenna entered Berkeley’s experimental Tussman programme before travelling through Asia and South America. He returned to complete a degree combining ecology, resource conservation and shamanism in 1975.
With ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison, he founded Botanical Dimensions to preserve plants and the cultural knowledge surrounding them. Their work placed the relationship between people and plants at its centre.
McKenna follows psychoactive plants through a speculative account of human culture. His proposals about their role in human evolution are conjectures, not established science.
Read it as an encounter with an inventive and provocative thinker, keeping curiosity and critical judgment together.
McKenna died in 2000. His family now stewards an archive of his writing and recordings, while his talks continue to offer an unusually vivid meeting with his ideas.
1997 · 1:24:40
Recorded at Esalen · Free streamingListen to the talk
1982 · 1:14:24
Recorded at Esalen · Free streamingListen to the talk1999 · Terence McKenna · Recorded talk
Listen & read1994 · Terence McKenna · Recorded lecture
Listen & readTerence McKenna · Recorded talk & transcript
Listen & read
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