Can Art Rewire Your Brain?

About this episode

In this episode, Saadia Khan and Ramzi Fawaz discuss how art and literature can transform perspectives similarly to psychedelics, exploring themes of identity, self-awareness, and activism.

What if reading the right book or watching the right film could transform how you see the world, the same way psychedelics do? In this episode, Saadia Khan sits down with Ramzi Fawaz, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, queer theorist, comic book scholar, and host of 'Nerd from the Future'. Ramzi's upcoming book “How to Think Like a Multiverse” makes a bold argument: that the humanities' art, literature, and media can function as psychedelic therapy, cracking open the way we think, feel, and relate to one another. But this conversation goes far deeper than the classroom. Saadia and Ramzi unpack why young people are actually more self-aware than we give them credit for, what we get wrong about "woke" culture, how resentment can be a tool for healing (not just destruction), why identity is something you live — not own — and what it really means to stay in your lane as a form of activism. Ramzi also gets personal about navigating sexual hierarchies in gay male culture, growing up Lebanese American in Orange County, and how his own name carries the weight of culture, language, and love. This is one of those rare conversations that makes you want to rethink…

People in this episode

Host: Saadia Khan

Guest: Ramzi Fawaz

Topics covered

• art and literature
• psychedelic therapy
• self-awareness
• woke culture
• identity
• activism
• queer theory

Keywords

• art
• psychedelics
• self-awareness
• woke culture
• identity
• queer theory
• activism
• literature
• media

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Books & works: How to Think Like a Multiverse

Places: Orange County

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