thumbnail of NET Journal; LSD: Lettvin vs Leary
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
as ben in the spring as part of a student run lecture series solos instantly packed mit's as the auditory they were dr timothy leary founder of the league for spiritual discovery which advocates lsd as a religious sacrament and mit professor jerome let's think of blackberry as well timothy leary began experiments with lsd as a lecturer in psychology at harvard dismissed him in nineteen sixty three he's now on a thirty thousand are bound for possession of marijuana artillery spoke first mainly in darkness while psychedelic effects were projected on the screen behind him we've recreated these effects and colors and
at tonight's ceremony by generating two dollars michelle us can see a powerful and dangerous chemical usually by the boston water supply creates a colorless tasteless it's the point and that day he developed an innovative way to do it and in the end you can get whacked and i don't know it's a it's also dangerous chemical
that is it too much in the wrong place like in your lungs and julian and theoretically only are romo says militia has an audience that because it's so dangerous and so addictive videos i initially about poet it is that which case they'll discover that water has many uses and indeed has been used for thousands of here is or millions of years of a dozen years as a way of life has also been used to fund is a sacrament i notice activists sacrament decided that it might be something that you use to get high yeah this is something that gets you high television stage set of
amazing how <unk> said oh let me that population states at mit cambridge massachusetts as if america and reminds you that you not just you're not just twenty two twenty three twenty four years earlier to lose it rebecca american mind you on weekend memories that nine months and watery league threatens this ship on this planet and no that's why we have the lights out nothing i don't know
the only fifty to take the lsat experience and the movie is in the americas he was injured movies in that period and they can't go to open their ceremony tonight in to remind us that it's about that azar has been using the second doesn't use your mind says the rug because of the
sign that we all have and finance renee montagne host roy g and i think that's a question for me and then when my many long evolution deal in july to fax wavering on fire is a dangerous maybe we should pass an audience that we should have gotten that is is it i see
mr cheney and the virus is on the way and then there were not use the very earliest moments know what they can do what they can to destroy its investments in the fire's doing the thing where the cops were on this planet i wonder maybe they were right about me needing raises and ready even now the fbi now we may see eccentric diva companies and engineering technology and start cutting the sacraments of birthing air fire water and ceremonies but i really think it should be that i'm uniform and wearing navy out again in this particular really show you have going here even city because i am
sitting out front of you know thousands of years and for candlelight you know what i'm talking about where we're going and so about what we do about it haven't figured out of me to the back in which you know the real real goal of sciences is to flip out regional land and forgotten or you thought that the role of scientists with to build bigger and bigger spaces for the television show it really yeah within the road running from the cops and robbers get here to the comedy show there and is going to build so that we can go faster and faster and farther farther from television show and he takes it seriously and you take those two sizes do you realize that every great science wasn't in the tv show isn't it
and as he got into in the end for me that's why i say that new have been lead to me look at the religion is something that's a serious something that's my reading lulu when the basic questions like a journal science religion is supposed to be fun and ecstasy because you know it's all play that were dominant energy and you think they're in prison and one would place reciting let's go and they do
start as a signpost that in pursuit of quest for the ultimate as siphoning for science or the pleasures time should be the standby the joy is frightening situation that nasa has announced the citizens plastic necessarily mean really it's six years drop out turn on and get back into it and then the taliban and turn on its investment and mr meserve rain damaged by what margin of whom karl linder galaxy and the snow's think of god and in a coat made a few years in the adventures of the other sense there is
no amount of energy no justice and then when the who and the that and they saw suddenly likely there is to be we find it inside the combat against ohio and yet the family and then not believe that i really believe that it's really a medical leave in a lang really inventive music don't get attracted by the end of the main reasons i got out you know i really it is and then this is a place that really hundred thousand rail incidents are seven thousand incidences second i mean you know this has been assessing the flowing
of turn turn turn i mean he got in touch with the new century and so that information that's in that tv analysts say this you can't turn on miller's attention and i think he he is the second with the second the second is something that changes your life it changes your nervous is that the second that you used as a lecture by delivering medicine men
who served let's listen visit and the simpsons so it is silence is it being in the situation as it is rather systematic looting attempted sexual going to fly in with an immediate success
or ingestion of sacred foods today the sacrament as a candidate was this is it can't get upset about honesty ms leis is it i mean and will come along because a thousand years siu has been trying to stop people from wandering on stage set of this video game and giving out sighing and inspires me back inside or even the biochemistry or bring about the same experience is almost over within your lifetime you'll see this ad revenue
key to the internal process without that doesn't matter is a lot of it had been sitting around home smoking marijuana and preparing for your next to a weekly honesty session like good it convention people should be a new jersey say theyre not really isn't exactly like tiny brain stimulation and there's a man in my chairman's hat and you give them going business and it's about nsa
this white flat there's no evidence that i know very much about what it gets excited for his ordinariness as going to the genetic material anytime you hear him talking about lsd and any site that asks whether that for all honesty i suggest that you'd be very skeptical i don't know whether these are good or bad and that's mostly on the nervous system on them or the second is always in this new technique is a zionism that is usually think that it could be that's dave davies in
its russian roulette parties are in each league of many about the atmosphere at the end of a system like that recently and i'm an unknown in zaire c iran including vietnam and polluted air i would say that the russian roulette of lsd is the media is the without major scientific study that is the one to tell you a story or what happened with the scientific study of marijuana in the united states and i walk around a long time everyone has their mind made up
about marijuana how many of you have to read a scientific paper in a scientific journal following the other scenario jackson control language of science and you have evidence that marijuana as an investment twenty years to do business some are saying the marijuana laws they're now they are christians we just have to have something that they're as an economist those positions made in letters and in his bed as an audience there were some studies done
on marijuana mac suggesting that one could be useful as a psychiatric care for depression because you're going to feel good you bet they're scientists twenty one when he was in the nineties the state legislature i came here as a pious and
very much against and as the app and the irish american and i like a drink as a middle class future hundred years a california i heard about marijuana and occasionally use it because the reagan morning he thinks in the fund that there was no way and then well when the crimson announces the senate isn't affected by smoke marijuana and that he had to announce that throaty because seven years ago i was a second same things for the people on our side that it does and in that mission statement like
the city and as the region's legal in those days the navy's rattling guess just like it is in iran versus products in war in mexico who was it institution let's see samoa here we took down the ganges river and sat there the ocean nights sitting on an early death and i began to learn something about marijuana
and i smoked marijuana every day trying it out day in different contexts and different activities and is at the now on a tree no one outside of say twenty eleven though most of them a positive technology there's no no one is the minimum that honestly we didn't know that there's probably no activity the ge aviation week we wouldn't be at oregon hearing by the use of marijuana and the scientific question is which ones taste you know then no one it just fell in a sense nice job
the seth rollins is a version that everyone that is that sense of the turnout in madison at the human services it comes through i'm sorry oh there's a lesson about education a way that you finish your education when hear that said sharon i'm so it was and so i say this i say this with an affectionate as an artist's <unk> states doesn't
mention the nervous system and function as an icon that is the final day last sunday in april why is that rob ickes turner's olmert a bunch of strangers that they didn't know and traveling you have to be trained in the only crucial issues like
control of consciousness the educational process is a rio music you're writing now you the younger generation in particular had gotten that i'm not a way that i don't think it will get another penny these are me you think it makes a difference this particular night it in yemen as the speed acceleration of technology and music changing your generation has grown up in a society a society of your brand and any parents go and
present runs scientific hypothesis as playing tennis racket which is les should be that i suspect that this crime has implications haven't really rich preston from insects because it's a staggering now set a date and its fifth twenty five many shops are beginning to lose lose that that means you have less as a thirty or thirty five to forty five in that you had twenty and here you guys i know
and raises a note this is me it means the new young people can not viruses you know this country to stay and in nineteen fifty nine you just can't buy this is that you just can't buy this is that if you were running for office gass is basically is not really now he's
resigned since the us does not in the next issue six months a year linton that we have entered into a power color it is an indication of this revolution is so much greater then nasa technological or the atomic for the iconic at this ad is focusing inside and for the first time in history at least in western history as anyone for the first time in humans western history man has finally caught on that it doesn't make a difference what was on out there as a just how much control of thing you have in here the internal threat and the observant can relate to the community made it had the controlling rapid just as easily
you've got to turn on your parents and i can turn out the va doesn't young people around and they invented the college's citizens those that hadn't whitney year she made a turn on so that's the way that they're doing that to say that you've done and the first many years ago you were radicalized and you that's you're not a verdict and you've done enough to mind robin tournament intimate level of income your senses about it when
dr timothy leary the high priest of the need for spiritual discovery finished speaking doctor drawn leapt into the floor like a lot and was senior psychiatry is that the man in the state hospital in illinois he is now a professor of communications physiology and the departments of biology and electrical engineering at mit he also lectures and humanities department but lathan who has three teenage children is now at mit has a man students can talk to our gender identity is exceedingly seductive and in the main i must admit that i find the trestle middle aged middle class enormously oh is it all that laura ard is that i can get a tv set you might call a grave impact the
problem is whether the label really replaces the dea i mean you're sitting at a sitting in fundamentals might strike me as being in the sense that i know better off in this first let's put it this way those surprises are like well yeah what commercial it's b nonetheless i think that it was take your thesis extremely seriously and i will not do you think this summer was either attacked the un scientific brown's because the question as is very obvious is not scientific but more therefore for this reason i would like to come find my remarks strictly to the us are in that they're paying off it's
b apple article questions and all of that i mean simply questions of what constitutes good in people but i feel so low or another that this man is in the hands of the public that has to say is in a private hell of a curious and somewhat sectarian divides that is having made his pact with the devil this is what he asked for and that's what he gets for isis but they're in making these spots very much like monkeys or acts that one point that we get literally and what we lose lose rather much of a look at this man sitting there with a smile as a supernova smile ecstatic smile
i feel sick i don't feel that i want to trade i feel sick or you and i ask you know how many would train he assures hugh he is in the uk most ecstasy when you can get because otherwise he's in that next to see why would not any trade let us play another trait that have been offered in the past you and i lived through the period of robots you're walking to the office i don't like my mama is if you write about your flag fly doesn't matter you have traded for it doesn't matter a local radio after all brain tissue as he is in so much of the law that now here you trade how many of you would take a law giving the
guarantee that you don't share your comments say i don't want to hear everything is bothering the hell out of me because bothering the hell out of me i want to start carrying i wanna be happy and so they go on my own is this if it would make one aa ball when a minute this is that we are without the question the pines while james presentation extremely compelling sure if you'll excuse me of those adornments this unethical but got pretty irate
i find him as he says terribly compelling and for this reason i feel that i have to answer it for myself use it you are selling our functions is selling off exactly those functions which have set you aside critically in every possible way you're designing games and sports suspending judgment for a while if it directly at five o'clock we all know november what some sort of a ban food you were going to say you're trying to remember you know being pushed out by this guy the compromise we've made that was against your brain you see all these things about a forgotten did the popularity with the reassurance that when the outdoor hallways are you are possibly back to a state where a judge then miraculously has been restored this is the
state eventually went wrong and as the messiah they agree with you i can conceive of your moral thing that has been done by the government in the wholesale banning the drugstore i suspect that's since the battle now and this is like the papers trying to abolish pornography the more there is a live around them or they thrive the point they account for getting rather than reasoning people out if you have a thesis to advance the pieces there's a couple pieces what one does not go with force of the kind that the government has done spurring the crime rate as it has been done by the morphine addict sister and i feel very violently about this because it is to take care of an addict or when i was back in the
as i say i'm perfectly willing to admit with you that the government has done a monstrous thing for bidding many of the many of the drugs there are the four believe now juana i believe is pure nonsense in the light of the majority report it is however the law of the land and therefore i can talk to five people in conscience to break the law of the land for the very simple reason that i'm not american the pod inside outside all of these other drugs that you have been handing out that you have been talking about at this point sir i look upon you as a tool of the devil and i look upon you as a fundamentally dishes two of them
and i'll explain to you walk in general would want rights something like a drink a martini or drink of wine or gets drunk with one's friends in the evening and wakes up the next day with a hangover there is a reassurance the miraculous re issue and somehow another of judgment to yourself question with i was being with us kelly do we have this reassure us said sure it's russian roulette short it's dangerous but let us look specifically at the danger and i'm not going to talk you know ought to play because it would only be common people what is the fundamental thing about us at we'll have a reaction like
this it will take the votes it will take a train and three days later he gets a return trip and a week later he takes a return trip not haven't taken any more drugs how is it possible for anybody on observing this to say to any person you take one chance of a hundred the return trips there for free is a return trip let me ask you if there is no cost how come the return trip that flipping it suddenly and the flipping out suddenly suddenly the car is suddenly smells have our family cars have sounds and then you're back in the normal world and what does this now like politically and what does this moment you as a clinician what is this is this operation to complain that this what is it that he would have acted
the point as a temporal lobe epileptic with an r and you know that got them well where you know it's this way at me do well if you read a description of the war are either in penfield and erickson spoke call epilepsy and cerebral mobilization that many years ago once you've got a hold of an exceedingly charming book by the culprits recall the arrival where he discusses all
simply revives that yet steve and i am going to get emotional about this audience and you can become addicted to end or when the men comes to me and says i haven't had a shop i haven't had any lsd for three months but it still flew and flipped out as a clinician what do i think about what do i worry about and what i worry about here specifically if it has a functional each of the sounds of jokey functional easy as i can show it by cutting them open up a functional easy because clinically it goes along with other states that have turned out to be like tumors rights dark like it's on the head and things so very well this is one that role
very weird stuff about the templeton i will not go into it so simply remarked that it is that particular portion of the brain that is affected in half the axe murderers that we have in this country as it under her to you why thinking about a guy coming home life history at the registration spencer says i don't remember a little uneasy about how well let me assure you half of these things are in fact have grown wealthy go on what are called cycle motor specious what this thaw have been shot in texas at the campus shop various people this is just usually at this case they fall into what about dallas the one about travel site i know a set of physicists
we took awhile ago in group because they're curious people all physicists are curious people designing they're not curious to look at la in a group of about five or six of them tickets and psilocybin on the recipe gotten from the telephone number here in cambridge because both the call to get the rights and they haven't taken it they got violently sick the first day and every one of them for three months thereafter was incapable of doing any theoretical work in a row house the same but clearly a barren in their higher critical function as james butler the hangover of this i hang over the last not an hour or two hours but
several days several months mostly but only several based let's be conservative i hang over for a few days or something happens and your judgment by which you weigh things old are you and now in the position of regenerating this bike against a one trip every three days one trip every four days and you pay for the vision of yourself by the loss of that you played for getting out by the loss of judge you pay for whatever vision's you get by this judgment that status now you might say how one of private they get it right now and i think it's a rather simple reason the fight seems to be a little bit they
didn't pay i'm giving the double my judgment my soul my intellect all of the work or for the eighth pick like the nymphomaniac not what the moronic load for the bottom of a maniac as anybody here envy the nymphomaniac all day long and anybody in the air as anybody in the law because he didn't and b that i was sitting in the state hospital either the key is cheap the ecstasy is she and you are settling for a second rate permanent second rate world by the complete fabrication of the intellect in the old days if it wasn't on a robot and it was done by psychoanalysis that's done by drops i can find in myself
no joy in such an outcome it's bad in the senate when we many many worms many cities because it is the fingers the real reason
yeah yeah there's less buzz so the situation omer i want to see it is the players and as in the
school plays and then status is this
is the color film shown during doctor's presentation were excerpts from the psychedelic experience produced by tj email and ellen willis music by ravi shankar and report from mobile produced by jonas my kids are in their own tongue in fb tool
Series
NET Journal
Episode Number
162
Episode Number
206
Episode
LSD: Lettvin vs Leary
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-q52f766j20
NOLA Code
NJLL
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/15-q52f766j20).
Description
Description
Live debate on drug use, the devil and dropping out between Timothy Leary (A Former Harvard psychology professor) and Jerome Lettvin (chemist, physician, MIT professor). Included the short film "The Psychedelic Experience" with music by Ravi Shankar. 1967. Won the Tom Phillips Award for Best Television Public Service competition sponsored by the UPI Broadcasters Association of Massachusetts.
Broadcast Date
1967-11-20
Broadcast Date
1968-09-23
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Debate
Topics
Social Issues
Subjects
LSD (Drug); Television debates; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sacrament and symbol; devil; Debates and debating in mass media; Religion and sociology; Hallucinogenic drugs; counterculture
Rights
Rights Note:,Rights:,Rights Credit:(c) WGBH Educational Foundation,Rights Type:Web,Rights Coverage:,Rights Holder:(c) WGBH Educational Foundation
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:51:27
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation
Writer: Leary, Timothy
Writer: Hoyt, Austin
Writer: Lettvin, Jerome
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 22057 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: Digital Betacam
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:51:09
WGBH
Identifier: 135114 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: VHS
Generation: Copy: Access
Duration: 00:51:09
WGBH
Identifier: 20229 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:51:09
WGBH
Identifier: b4ba372bc460a49e96779489b35fad15967df2a7 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: Quicktime
Color: Mixed (Color & B&W)
Duration: 00:00:00
WGBH
Identifier: 9b2811dcc44f19aead0b276c47ea3027b895084d (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Mixed (Color & B&W)
Duration: 00:00:00
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 1 inch videotape: SMPTE Type C
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-4 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-5 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 1 inch videotape: SMPTE Type C
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-4 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2413075-5 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Identifier: [request film based on title] (Indiana University)
Format: 16mm film
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “NET Journal; LSD: Lettvin vs Leary,” 1967-11-20, WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 26, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-q52f766j20.
MLA: “NET Journal; LSD: Lettvin vs Leary.” 1967-11-20. WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. April 26, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-q52f766j20>.
APA: NET Journal; LSD: Lettvin vs Leary. Boston, MA: WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-q52f766j20