Creating The Future Of Psychedelics - Hamilton Morris - #284

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back. My guest today is Hamilton Morris, journalist, documentary producer and a chemist. Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is one of the most interesting documentaries around chemistry, psychoactive drugs, psychedelic culture, and traditional uses for plant medicine ever. Season three is the last one, sadly, but Hamilton joins me today to talk about his interest in consciousness, why chemistry hasn't captured culture like other sciences, why Mkat failed because of a branding issue, why we should be synthesizing DMT ourselves instead of squeezing toads, and much more. If you haven't got chance to watch Hamilton's Pharmacopeia and you enjoyed this episode, you will absolutely adore it. There is a link in the show notes below where you can search to just see where you might be able to watch it in your country. Hamilton's awesome. He's so in love with the science in a really rationalist way, and then has this other side to him which is very empathetic and very forgiving, and he's interested in psychology. I really, really enjoyed this, and it's been a long time coming. I've watched his work for years, years and years, like a decade, and got him on the show. Pretty cool. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by DW Aligners. If you want to get the perfect straight smile that you have always dreamed of, you can have it within six months and at 70% cheaper than other Invisible Align methods. Their custom-made Invisible Aligners are unobtrusive. You can change them regularly, and they incrementally adjust your teeth, creating a straighter smile. Their digital system means that you can skip regular trips to the dentist by using their at-home impression kit, digital scanners around the UK, and their dental monitoring system. Diamond whites can create a fast treatment for a fraction of the price compared to traditional methods. It's 70% cheaper than other Invisible Aligners. It's an easier, quicker and cheaper way to get the smile you've always dreamed of while still receiving all the support and expertise you would traditionally, and they offer great finance plans. Given the fact that you're sat at home at the moment with probably not much to do, not many places to go, and not many people to see, if you're thinking about straightening your teeth, now is probably a pretty good time. They're half a billion scans deep. Diamond whites have done half a billion scans, and you are given a coordinator to help you every step of the way. Simply head to dwaliners.co.uk and use the code Wisdom10 for 10% off. They do not offer discounts anywhere else, as the price is already 70% cheaper than all of the competitors, but you can get 10% off with Wisdom10, and that means that you get 10% off the Home impression Kit, which is now under £90, and you can save £230 off the treatment altogether. dwaliners.co.uk and the code Wisdom10 get the straighter smile that you have always dreamed of. But now it's time to learn about psychedelics with the wise and very wonderful Hamilton Morris.
Hamilton Morris, welcome to the show.

**Hamilton Morris** (3:24)
Thanks for having me.

**Chris Williamson** (3:25)
Really happy to have you here, man. If you meet someone at a party for the first time, and they ask, what do you do? What's your answer?

**Hamilton Morris** (3:34)
It depends on what I'm doing at the time, because I do a number of different things. If I'm directing a TV show, then I'll say, I direct a TV show. If I'm writing, I'll say, I'm writing an article, or I'm doing research on this story for a magazine piece or something like that. And if I'm primarily doing chemistry, I'll say, I'm doing chemistry right now. I'm doing some chemistry. So, it just depends on what I'm doing. Because I do different, I've tried to balance these three components of my life and as best I can, not only balance them, but allow them to feed off of each other and integrate them into each other in an interesting way.
So, I think that's actually been very helpful.

**Chris Williamson** (4:23)
What ties those three things together?

**Hamilton Morris** (4:27)
I think curiosity and a desire to investigate the natural world, to understand the world. That's certainly a huge goal of chemistry, is to understand the natural world. It's been the focus of almost every article I've ever written, whether it's about crime or chemistry or psychoactive drugs, to try to understand things, phenomena, how they happen, what happened in the past, what's happening now. And filmmaking is the same thing as well, to try to document things, to characterize them, to understand things that are mysterious.

**Chris Williamson** (5:08)