Divergent States

Psychedelics don’t fix your life. They don’t make you a better person. They don’t replace responsibility. And they don’t solve the problems waiting for you when you come back. In this episode, we sit down with Talia Eisenberg from Beond to talk about what actually happens after a powerful psychedelic experience—especially with ibogaine. What changes, what doesn’t, and why the hardest part is often what comes after. We get into: why insight isn’t the same as changewhat people misunderstand abo...

This is the human center of The Many Faces of Coca. By the time coca enters Western conversations, it’s already been abstracted—reduced to policy, drugs, or crime. But for millions of people, coca isn’t any of those things. It’s daily life. In this final episode of the series, we speak with political theorist and anthropologist Manuela Picq, who has lived and worked alongside communities in the Andes and Amazon. This conversation moves beyond theory and into lived reality—how coca functions a...

In Part One of The Many Faces of Coca, 3L1T3 and Bryan sit down with Wade Davis to unpack the long history of the coca leaf and how a plant used for over 8,000 years became globally criminalized. This conversation isn’t about cocaine. It’s about coca. Wade walks us through: How coca was independently domesticated multiple times in pre-Columbian South AmericaWhy early 20th-century elites blamed coca for poverty instead of confronting inequalityThe 1949 UN commission that arrived with its concl...

What happens when a 25-year career at CNN ends — and a new life begins? In this episode of Divergent States, we talk with Cesar Marin, former CNN producer and founder of Microdosing Over 50, about how psychedelics helped him navigate midlife, identity loss, and personal reinvention. Cesar shares his journey from broadcast media to becoming an advocate for intentional microdosing later in life. We explore the difference between microdosing for healing vs optimization, how intention shapes outc...

Season Two of Divergent States is about something simple and surprisingly rare: exploring altered states without losing touch with reality. In this preview episode, 3L1T3 and Bryan share two short moments from upcoming conversations that define the tone of the season ahead. In the first, Shane Mauss reflects on how psychedelics open people to awe—but also to certainty, conspiracies, and belief systems that can replace reality if no one pushes back. In the second, Cesar Marin explains why pres...

In this episode of Divergent States, 3L1T3 sits down with Betty Aldworth, the new co-president of MAPS, as she steps into shared leadership with Ismail Ali following Rick Doblin’s four-decade run. Betty brings decades of experience in drug policy reform, from Colorado’s 2012 cannabis legalization campaign to leading Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and now helps guide MAPS through one of the movement’s most pivotal moments: the FDA’s rejection of Lycos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy ap...

Psychedelics are no longer the fringe—they’re reshaping medicine, culture, and consciousness itself. In this episode of Divergent States, 3L1T3 and Bryan sit down with Joe Moore, co-founder and CEO of Psychedelics Today, to explore the messy evolution of the movement: from the chaotic 1960s to today’s corporate clinics and grassroots revival. They trace Psychedelics Today’s origins, dive into the Vital training program, and discuss what it means to build trust in a scene that still distrusts ...

History shows politics can make or break psychedelic medicine, will we repeat the 1960s backlash, or finally move forward? In this episode of Divergent States, we explore the uneasy intersection of psychedelics and politics. MDMA remains a Schedule I drug—classified as dangerous with no medical use—while at the same time advancing through FDA Phase III trials. This contradiction highlights the limbo psychedelics face today: criminalized on one side, medicalized on the other. We revisit ...

In this episode of Divergent States, host 3L1T3 and co-host Bryan sit down with Paul F. Austin, founder of The Third Wave and the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. We dive deep into microdosing psychedelics, intentional use for peak performance, and the rise of psychedelic coaching as a professional path. Paul shares insights from his book Mastering Microdosing, his vision for conscious entrepreneurship, and how psychedelics are reshaping the way we think about healing, creativity, and human po...

What happens when the most hunted man in psychedelic history walks free and joins us for a conversation? In this deeply reflective episode of Divergent States, I sit down with William Leonard Pickard: chemist, philosopher, author of The Rose of Paracelsus, and the man once called the “Acid King.” After decades behind bars, Pickard returns with revelations about time, memory, suffering, redemption, and the spiritual cost of psychedelic pursuit. We discuss the rise and fall of the most infamous...

A former U.S. Senator says the federal government is preparing to fast-track psychedelic medicines, especially for veterans with TBI, PTSD, addiction, and treatment-resistant depression. In this conversation, Kyrsten Sinema explains why the current administration is unusually aligned behind plant-based therapies, how Ibogaine and MDMA could move through the FDA faster than expected, and why small researchers, not Big Pharma, may end up shaping the field. We dig into: Ibogaine’s impact on Spec...

In this powerful new episode of Divergent States, your hosts 3L1T3 and Bryan sit down with Tom Feegel—CEO and Co-Founder of Beond, a pioneering Ibogaine clinic based in Mexico, to discuss the unfiltered realities of healing, addiction recovery, and the evolving landscape of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Tom brings two decades of sobriety, a past life in global brand marketing, and deep experience navigating both the light and shadow of the psychedelic resurgence. This isn’t a conversation fu...

In this episode of Divergent States, we sit down with Alli Schaper, CEO of Supermush and co-founder of the Microdosing Collective, to explore the evolving world of functional and psychedelic mushrooms. Alli shares her journey into microdosing advocacy, the challenges of navigating the gray market for psychedelics, and the urgent push for policy reform to ensure safe, legal access. We dive into the science behind microdosing, its profound benefits for mental health, creativity, and even athlet...