Psymposia Mailbag (September 2026)
The crew reads comments on their recent conversion therapy, Reggie Watts, and Alex Novell videos.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] I really appreciated that because I mean it was hard to do that episode. Like there was a lot of material to walk through and just emotionally like very challenging material. But a big reason we did it was we saw that some of the analysis was lacking, you know, around the dynamics that were going on. So it meant a lot to hear that other people appreciated that. We've got an extra member in the chat here. It looks like in Normy's lap, a pretty nice little cat named George. Hi, George. This is George. He has, if anybody isn't watching, this is George.
[00:46] He has wanted a lot of sungles today. Yeah. And he also had his birthday last month. Yeah. Happy birthday, George. and he is 19 years old now. 19y old. He's my little man. A All right, let's do mailbag. All right, we're hopping into the mailbag, which was a segment that we had in some older podcasts where we would take comments and emails from our listeners and kind of read them and discuss them on air. It's been a while since we did. We read hate mail. [laughter] Yeah, yes. So, hate us, love us, shoot us a message. Maybe we'll read it on air today. less hate mail and some more positive comments today to start off our mailbag section again with. We can get into some negative comments one day, but I figured it'd be nice to start the section off again by going over some comments we've received recently for some of our more recently published videos.
[01:39] So, we've got a few comments from our recent interview with Alex Nobel, a comment on our conversion therapy series, and a comment from our recent Reggie Watts video. So, we'll jump in with a comment from our interview with Alex that reads, "It's so refreshing to hear people talking about how horrible Andrew Callahan is. His ascendance has been really frustrating to watch. I went back and rewatched the accusations against him, and it was beyond sex pest. He had Graham Platner level grape accusations with multiple women. His corroborating evidence from therapists, friends, and text messages from that time. anyone who had their email given away by him deserves it for continuing to follow and support him. So yeah, this comment came in just after that big email scandal that he went through where he gave a bunch of his fans emails to Hunter Biden as he was launching a crypto company.
[02:31] Let's see here. I have nothing to say. I agree with it. Yeah, much appreciated. And the allegations against Andrew are stunning that he was able to make such a comeback in my opinion. They're pretty bad. And a lot of people don't seem to have actually again read the primary source material. I think this one was also from that interview to that point. I didn't even know about all this egregious Andrew Callahan stuff. Disappointing to learn about this though I'm not totally shocked to be honest. Also refreshing critique of Hamilton Morris. I always felt annoyed at his nepoaby smuggness, affectation, and casual approach to psychedelics. The critiques in this podcast are not about scandal, drama, and gossip. They are about serious issues of journalistic responsibility and integrity. Agreed. And if they haven't seen it, make sure to watch the Hamilton's Pharmarmacoupe series which really dives into Hamilton.
[03:22] Definitely. That's the essentially the series that relaunched our platform. Yes. [laughter] Thanks Hamilton for spurring us back into action. We also had some nice commentary that put together some connections from our conversion therapy series. is this person retweeted our original kind of blue sky post about this saying that a lot of people are surprised that the right-wing would be into psychedelics and things adjacent, but I was raised in a right-wing religious cult. So, I'm not surprised. They have always been drawn to magical truths and solutions and the idea that the universe itself agrees with them on every level. I just thought that was great insight and exactly the kinds of connections that we're hoping people get when they watch our content between the right-wing influence, the sort of new Christian nationalist faction of psychedelic users.
[04:13] Yeah. And the stuff that we were talking about today with Genesis work, right? Yeah. Exactly that. Yeah. Good book here is Alan Piper's Strange Drugs Make for Strange Bed Bed Fellows. It's a really quick read, but it's probably one of the earliest earlier examinations of sort of how new age spirituality like merges with right-wing culture. Yeah, totally. And if you're into Alan Piper or not familiar with him, we also have an interview from way back when that Pace did with one of our first podcasts. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good one. Highly recommend. I'll throw a link to that in the footnotes. And then these are from our recent Reggie Watts video which got a pretty incredible response. It was really kind of nice to see people understanding what we were putting down in that.
[05:01] I wasn't part of that video, but I think you guys did a really good job of explaining the issues at play there and people seem to really resonate with it. And you edited it fantastically. Thank you. Yeah, much appreciated. [laughter] No, not at all. You guys gave me plenty of good content to work with. So, this comment said that they really liked Watts when he was the band leader on late night chat on that late night chat show, but he's shockingly repulsive now. I thank you all so much for existing. I'm pretty much a loner most of the time. You all feel like my kind of people. I have been an amateur drug nerd as defined by Arrowid in 1965 with first LSD Life magazine cover story when I was 9 years old and you make me feel not so Alone. This comment had a lot of things I liked in it.
[05:47] I too like Reggie Watts for a while and that's something I think I would have said on that episode where I on it. I listened to Comedy Bang Bang religiously. I think James shared a lot of my sort of cultural influences there that he mentioned in my exposure to Reggie Watts. But to be honest, reporting on and being kind of in the psychedelic millu has been a an exercise in having to kill your heroes, which has been really kind of an unfortunate thing to have people in the space that you know when you're first coming in seem like they're saying the right things and are interesting people just kind of consistently disappointing you. And when you and just meeting people or learning more about people who on the surface kind of helped introduce you to the space or that you liked originally just being completely disappointing in the end.
[06:39] Yeah. Also love the reference. You're not alone. Yeah. Another part on that alone thing is like all of us I think and especially you all before I was really around but myself included like felt kind of alone in this you know critique of the psychedelic industry of like you know everybody around me if I'm in psychedelics is like on this side of the maps and everything and afraid to be critiquing and challenging a lot of it and so there you know we're out here and I think you know [laughter] normie you've all experienced that to a very extreme degree with threats and such. So yeah, we understand. Yeah. And that is literally like a big motivation for us even being an entity at all is that we happened to find each other and we were like, "Thank God, you know, there are other people who think in this way and also feeling a responsibility like not everyone has the privilege of having bumped into other people on the same kind of like
[07:40] Wavelengths at conferences and things like that. And so trying to make a way for other people to be able to find that other perspective and that we're not separate from the psychedelic kind of we are from a psychedelic culture that is just not the norm normative mainstream one and so kind of continuing to wave that flag I think is really important. Yeah. Yeah. I also love the reference to Arowid's discussion of drug nerds or I just looked it up Earth and Fire. Arrowid in 2004 published this kind of essay on drug geeks that I always thought was really fun that kind of gave a character sketch of the different like if you were playing like an RPG and you were selecting like a druid or a warrior or something to be like they kind of gave this sketch of like classes of drug geeks.
[08:26] U I just wanted to read them real fast cuz I always thought they were fun. There's like the collector, the taster, the daredevil, plant geeks, chemistry geeks, photo geeks, and many more they write. But I always thought it was kind of fun to think of drug geeks in a class system of like which drug geek are you? Pretty fun. On the Reggie Watts video, Oliver Schultz again. Oliver, thanks a lot for interacting with a lot of our videos recently. It seemed like maybe you were having a nice run through of a few of the different videos because I've seen a few of your comments and I've appreciated them all. But he wrote that these are very important issues discussed here. rational, educated, ethical critique of some highly problematic and all too common patterns with certain folks in the psychedelic community. Thank you for your work and I have now subscribed to your channel.
[09:13] Always had a weird as in bad feeling about Reggie Watts. Something felt off though. I wanted to like him for his musical comedic performances. His requirements and fee for appearances really says it all. What a narcissistic delusional poss. He's a prime example of how psychedelics can potentially exacerbate rather than attenuate existing pathological personality traits. And yeah, that's something I think we see a lot. So then we had a couple more comments on the Reggie Watts video that I wanted to bring up here. These ones, this first one writes, I think I've watched every video on the internet pertaining to Reggie Watts Rolling Stone article, and it was so nice to finally find intelligent, compassionate, and thorough analysis that I was looking for. You guys are great.
[09:59] I look forward to watching more of your videos. Yeah, I really appreciated that because I mean it was hard to do that episode. Like there was a lot of material to walk through and just emotionally like very challenging material. But a big reason we did it was we saw that some of the analysis was lacking, you know, around the dynamics that were going on. So it meant a lot to hear that other people appreciated that. Yeah, absolutely. And then the last comment from the Reggie video that we had on Q here was as a facilitator in this space who has been deeply aware and researching the major players here for a long time. I can't emphasize enough how important this conversation is. So many meaningful nuance deeply thoughtful takes here and so many topics, figures, references covered from the cover story podcast to Jules's work, love him, he's a gem, Maps's MDMA trial failures, the France Borzot controversy.
[10:57] Just wow. If I could, I'd give y'all a hug. So good. Also, I have worked in court settings and social services involving supporting DV domestic violence survivors. And you're absolutely right about the coercive control bit. Instant follow. Much love and thanks again for this meaningful coverage. Really appreciate hearing that. Yeah. and yeah meant so much to hear in particular for me because as I was speaking on that podcast, I was thinking so many of the times that I would mention something that like how many years it took me to figure out what I just said. And that included me going through my own process of healing from my own abuse dynamics with the exact dynamics I was describing and then like doing a lot of research to understand what happened to me and learning about how widespread this is across the psychedelic industry.
[11:49] So to have that process be you know able to produce the kind of analysis that other people find meaningful is just like profoundly you know moving for me frankly. Yeah. And we get so much [expletive] from people who don't seem to know anything about these concepts and issues. So, it's nice to hear from people that we are making it through to the people that we actually care about making it through to like that. And I think that's part something to like note on is this isn't a mailbag excluding hate mail just because we want to be positive. We're actually like the zeitgeist shift right now is that we are getting more positive notes like this. Like people are seeing that this is the case that we aren't full of [expletive] you know, and we what we have been saying for all this time is finally clicking with people in a way that I think is resonating for them to be able to, you know, publicly say it without fear as well.
[12:49] Yeah, very good point. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you all for your commentary. Feel free to write us at highsimposia.com. Leave a comment on any of our videos, Instagram posts, retweet us on Twitter, Blue Sky, whatever. And you might show up on the show sometime. We love to do reacts. And if you like what we do, feel free to follow us on Patreon, subscribe on Patreon at the5 or$10 level if you feel so inclined. If not, give us a sub here on YouTube or a like on the video. Goes a long way to helping people see our content. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll be back next time.
