Beiner – Strange Drugs for Strange Times

Abstract:
Can psychedelics help us tackle the biggest problems we face as a species? That’s the question at the heart of Alexander Beiner’s new book ‘The Bigger Picture’, coming out in June 2023. In this talk, he’ll explore how psychedelic experiences can help us access the ways of seeing and being that could help us find a way through ‘the Big Crisis’: the overlapping existential risks of climate change, geopolitical instability, cultural polarisation and our seeming inability to co-ordinate at scale to meet these problems.

But, like any trip, the road through it isn’t likely to be easy. Drawing on cognitive science, pop culture sociology, metaphysics and the latest psychedelic science, Alexander will explore how the psychedelic experience can help us make sense of the times we live in, and maybe even change them for the better.

Bio:Alexander Beiner is a writer and podcaster. He’s one of the executive directors of Breaking Convention, and the author of the upcoming book The Bigger Picture: How Psychedelics can Help us Make Sense of the World, published by Hay House in June 2023.
In 2018, he co-founded Rebel Wisdom, an alternative media and events platform that grew to a quarter of a million subscribers, and became an influential node in the systems change, personal growth and sense-making communities. His work explores how psychedelics can be used to elicit sustainable cultural change, the complexities of psychedelic capitalism and mainstreaming, and how differing beliefs and value systems affect psychedelic culture.