Have you ever wondered who on earth invented chemistry? You might have answered Antoine Lavoisier in your mind, but what concepts existed before those who invented modern chemistry, and what are the primordials of what we now call chemistry? To understand this, we dive into Ancient civilizations known for the origins of Alchemy, Mathematics, Geometry, and Medicine. We uncover the Hermetic philosophies and doctrines behind these civilizations, the reigning question of who was Hermes Trismegistus, and the origins of alchemy.

After covering the cultural impact of Amanita Muscaria, we dive into the influence of the mushroom on the chemist Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen and the birth of Gaboxadol. How the mushroom became popularized as a recreational drug, how to find your dosage, the effects of Amanita Muscaria, and the potential of the mushroom as a therapeutic tool, as an anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agent. We understand how Amanita Muscaria can be used to help with anxiety, autism, and panic disorder by looking up to the story of the YouTuber Amanita Dreamer. And how, despite the constant arguing about whether the mushroom is neurotoxic or not, Amanita Muscaria made its way into being a delicacy, being served as ice cream in France (including our recreation of the 1909 recipe) and pickled in Japan under the name BENI-TENGU-DAKE.

Fungi are all around the world, paving Earth through mycelial networks. Some fungi remain obscure due to their rare nature. Meanwhile, some became nurtured by our society and vividly present in our culture and traditions as well as a representative of the mushroom kingdom. We are talking about the unique and fascinating Amanita Muscaria. The historical use of Amanita still roams slightly on the mysterious side, as R. Gordon Wasson theorizes that the Soma drink mentioned in the Vedic Sanskrit hymn Rig Veda might be Amanita Muscaria. If this theory is correct, this would mean that the mushroom has been used for around 4000 years. Unfortunately, we still lack evidence, leaving us with the only historically accurate use of this mushroom amongst the Fino-Ungarians in Siberia. Amanita Muscaria would soon expand and become engrained in our culture until today, being present in children's books, playgrounds, cartoons, riddles, and video games. Amanita's cultural impact goes even beyond when Jonathan Ott linked this mushroom and Christmas, relating the red and white pattern of Amanita with the clothing pattern of Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) and the flying reindeer with ingesting the reindeer urine after they had eaten the mushroom by tribes in Siberia....

Since the '60s, the word LSD has been amongst us quite frequently, especially nowadays, with traditional therapies being replaced by psychedelic retreats and micro-dosing. But where does exactly LSD come from? Is it purely synthetic, or does it come from nature? Believe it or not, it comes from a fungus widely known since 500 to 1500 CE, Ergot. This fungus works similarly to puffballs and carries ergot alkaloids. Funnily enough, when Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD, he wasn't trying to synthesize a psychedelic but trying to find more ergot alkaloids that historically have been used to speed up labor and control postpartum hemorrhage and as a treatment for patients with moderate to severe migraine. Unfortunately, things were much darker during the Medieval era. Ergot would infect rye and various kinds of cereal, and after consumption of the infected cereals, people would become ill with ergotism. Ergotism plagues were known as Saint Anthony's Fire for their mild effects. Often, people would experience convulsions, seizures, spasms, diarrhea, paresthesia, severe itching and burning sensation (hence, its nickname St. Anthony's fire), headaches, nausea and vomiting, and mental effects such as hallucinations, mania, and psychosis until their death. You might think, well, that is all over...

Cannabis has been a part of our society for ages. With the legalization of the plant in various states, the words Terpenes, Cannabinoids, and Cannabis have been louder than ever, raising questions about various topics, one of them exercise. Athletes and workout enthusiasts have recently entered the world of Cannabis to benefit from the muscle relaxation and pain relief effects of the plant. Unfortunately, to those who compete at a professional level, smoking is often not possible. So we might question ourselves, how can I consume Cannabis without smoking it? To figure out various forms of consumption of the plant and how Cannabis can help athletes or during exercise, tips on how to implement working out into your routine, and what CBD is, we spoke to the molecular biologist and weight-lifter Suat Neven.

Art usually focuses on physical objects, viewpoints, or even the imaginary, but how about what is invisible to the human eye and can only be seen at a molecular level? We spoke to the crystallographer Dr.Mike McCormick (@xtal_xlear) to understand more about his artwork and how portraying molecules in the form of art may cultivate interest in the fields of chemistry to the masses.

With the approach of the night of Halloween, we uncover what it meant to be a witch during the medieval era, why they were hunted down and burned, and the influence of Christianism in non-Christian cultures such as Mazatecs and Native Americans, Modern-day witches, and the fact you may be practicing witch rituals without knowing, botanical name codes for witches, what is inside a witch potion or brew, the use of Atropine, and Scopolamine in Medieval era and their pharmacological use today and their pharmacodynamics. We hope you enjoy your Halloween!

On October 13, 2023, a team of researchers created the most extensive atlas of the human brain thus far, revealing more than 3,000 cell types, including many new to the scientific world. In the atlas, we can observe snapshots of the most complex organ known to man, the brain. But what does this atlas mean to psychedelic research?

The heartbreaking news of Dr.Roland Griffiths's passing was given to the world yesterday, October 17th. Griffiths was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer at 76. Despite his diagnosis to be terminal, he remained optimistic about existence. In an interview with the New York Times, he reminded us that we all are mortal quoting. "We all know that we’re terminal." Dr.Griffiths was an illustrious psychopharmacology professor at Johns Hopkins and spent decades studying the mechanism of mood-altering drugs. During his research, he published over 400 scientific papers on opiates and cocaine, sedatives and alcohol, and nicotine and caffeine.

With the popularization of terms such as "Toad Medicine" or "5-MeO", people began to wonder about the differences between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Generally, you might come across misinformation regarding the differences between the two. Because of its name, people believe that 5-MeO-DMT is just like DMT, and it all feels the same. "It's all DMT at the end of the day." For this reason, we decided to cover the differences between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT.

Biotechnology has been a recurrent theme in the research of psychedelics. However, we don't hear much about its importance. To find out the impacts of Biotechnology not only in psychedelics but in the world, we spoke or Arthur Dempsey (chavin_herbalists), covering themes such as propagation of species, genetic banks of species, improvement of genetics, how he became the first seed producer of Argyreia in Brazil, the creation of his Rare plant and Trichocereus Seed Bank, how can we save the Amazon Rainforest and ancient teachings by the Brazilian indigenous communities. A Biotecnologia tem sido um tema recorrente na pesquisa dos psicodélicos. No entanto, não ouvimos muito sobre a sua importância. Para descobrir os impactos da Biotecnologia não apenas nos psicodélicos, mas no mundo, conversamos com Arthur Dempsey (chavin_herbalists), abordando temas como a propagação de espécies, bancos genéticos de espécies, melhoria genética, como ele se tornou o primeiro produtor de sementes de Argyreia no Brasil, a criação do seu Banco de Sementes de Plantas Raras e Trichocereus, como podemos salvar a Floresta Amazônica e os ensinamentos ancestrais das comunidades indígenas brasileiras.

In this interview, we speak to the iconic Donna Torres. Donna is the artist responsible for the illustrations of Shulgin's latest book The Nature of Drugs, Dennis Mckenna's Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, and Jonathan Ott's The Age of Entheogens & The Angel's Dictionary, and Pharmacophilia or the Natural Paradises. We spoke about her experience as an artist, meeting the Shulgins and Jonathan Ott, how we can benefit from psychedelics, and tips for people who wish to start their psychedelic illustration careers.

Have you ever wondered how music influences our mood and our brain? Who invented music? Would modulating our perception of sound change the way we hear our favorite musicians? And most importantly, how can someone change their perception of sound? Millions of people listen to music daily, utilizing terminology from the classical media, we are in a "music epidemic". Despite not being fairly noticed, music does modulate our feelings and has an impact on our neural networks, reasoning why you will listen to sad songs when you are feeling melancholic, and happy songs when you are in a state of bliss. All those feelings are caused by a change in our brain chemistry. Now let us hypothesize that one would be able to change how we perceive sound, would that change how we feel about a certain song? Absolutely! Raising the question how would someone do that? To answer that, we dive into Alexander Shulgin's magnum opus TiHKAL, to a compound under the name DiPT, a compound known for its auditory hallucinations and distortion of sound.

The case of Professor John Buettner-Janusch is the biggest scandal around the University of NY, from synthesizing one kilo of Quaaludes and LSD to supposedly give to lemurs (where he gained his nickname Professor Quaalude) to attempting to poison the federal judge responsible for his case. Janusch claimed he had given LSD and Quaaludes to his primates to study their emotional behavior while under the influence of these compounds. However, in the wild, we have also heard that lemurs get high using hallucinogenic millipedes. To get down to these claims, we had a conversation the Tropical Biology student Daniela Bolanos Garcia to understand why they do it, whether they are consciously getting high, and what makes them high!

Depictions of nature are possibly the most primal form of art in human history. From cave paintings to surrealistic paintings from modernism, our art has evolved over the years. Influenced by the psychedelic renaissance and the popularization of mycology by lecturers such as Terence Mckenna and Paul Stamets. Such themes brought new eyes to the scene, people with an artistic vein and interested in more than breeding their own fungi, people that saw the beauty in such specimens and began adapting fungi with their special touch birthing wonderful artworks. Michael Campbell is one of these cases, after being a professor and a student in the field of art, he fell in love with the beauty of nature and started adapting his artworks to thematics such as religion, nature, and fungi.