The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
213 Extra. Visiting Wendell Berry & A Psychedelics Resurgence Back-Story: Off-record with Andrew Stone
Andrew Stone and I continued on for another 15 minutes off-record, but with the recorder still on. The conversation was so fascinating that I asked him if he was ok with it going out to you. So here’s a bonus 15 minutes with Andrew, where we went on to talk about his visit to Wendell Berry and their conversation on technology, some more uncanny connections, being part of the DMT studies in the ‘90s when psychedelics research restarted (and the story behind The Spirit Molecule on Netflix), and finally onto his work designing and building sustainable housing.
If you’ve come here first, tune into the main episode with Andrew, ‘Tech Innovator to Mystic Farmer: Andrew Stone’s Path’. You’ll find a few links in the show notes too, along with a transcript, and a few photos on the episode website, with more on Patreon for subscribing members.
Title slide image: Wendell Berry with Andrew’s ma Lib Stone (supplied).
Find more:
The portrait film of Wendell Berry, Look & See.
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I was somehow imagining, as we were speaking, you and Wendell side by side talking about appropriate technology.
Andrew:Oh, that was so beautiful because I basically wrote him and said this is a letter introduction, but I'm going to talk about my grandfather Because I know that people would probably reach out to him a lot. So I said you know, here's how we're connected. And we wrote back and forth and I've collected all of our writings. And then it got and then I said would it be okay if I came visit you one sunday afternoon in the off season? And he agreed to that and it was because my mom was older. You know, my mom was like one of the big kids when he was little, because my he was best friends with my great uncle. Hmm, and so so I bring my mom and Katie down there.
AJ:So he's got solar panels, but he's sort of written about not only a computer well and no tractor.
Andrew:And so here is my discussion with him I go, wendell, when you were little, draft horses were extant and they were the old way. But when I was young, people were using these old tractors, these little tractors like the one I have, and so for me, going back only meant going the one I have, and so for me, going back only meant going back that far, and he had to go back further. And so we did have a discussion. I, I go, but we can't strip any more coal out and people aren't gonna. They're gonna demand their lights in their cars and their this and that, because we were. You know the idea.
AJ:And then I was telling you about the idea of agrivoltaics, where you can graze and farm underneath solar panels yes, I mean, I've just been hearing from vermont that they're proposing to cut down a forest to put a soul see, that's just not right, that's not. They're on the cusp of approving it.
Andrew:This is we fight. What we need to cut down is our energy usage. Damn Jevons paradox. You know It'll take a transformation of mind, you know.
AJ:Well, that goes back to Thoreau. Yeah, it really does, and you know beyond.
Andrew:Now, have you read or heard about Harlan Hubbard? He's a real mentor for Wendell. In the late 40s he and his wife built a little shanty on a boat from Cincinnati and floated down the Mississippi and wrote about it. And Wendell spent the last few years collecting and he was a painter too as well, and he had read. This man had read Thoreau, of course, and got inspired and then lived the life. Now, thoreau only lived there for two years. He'd go and visit his mom, she'd make pancakes for him. So people admire him and everything, but they don't really know the story.
Andrew:But in Wendell's mind so the book is called. I just gave it away to my friend who rode around the East Coast. Did Katie mention our friend? Oh my God, nat Stone wrote a book called On the Water and he leaves New York City in a rowboat and he rose up to the Erie Canal and across the lakes and down the Ohio and into the Mississippi and down and around and the intercoastal in two sessions, two different years, but he makes the full trip around.
Andrew:So of course I just gave him the book by Wendell Berry called Harlan Hubbard, and it's just brilliant in his research of his work. So he's bringing the best quotes and some of the ideas and some of the experience and this is Wendell, you know. So you get both what wendell considers doing it the right way, and, and so for some people it's going to be I'm kind of more tom petty. You don't have to live like a refugee because you know I've got my teslas and you know I've been all about showing people that the that we can have this great simplification without, you know, returning to the stone age.
AJ:Yeah well that that would be the ideal. No, yeah, I guess it could go either way at this stage but we're still. We're still trying to feed the right wolf. Yeah, we are. We sure are, but here's to yeah some kind of so Wendell is such a wonderful.
Andrew:It was just great to meet him and he loved my mom because they could go back to their childhoods and talk about everything. So that made it legitimate and that was a blessing for all of us.
AJ:When was that?
Andrew:This was about here. I should send you a picture of Wendell and my mom.
AJ:Yeah.
Andrew:Because she lives in Cincinnati. So okay, I think it's under my. Still where you grew up, 93. Yeah, well, nearby she downsized her house a little. It's still a beautiful place. She entertains regularly. It's still a beautiful place, she entertains regularly. She's really a at 93. She's still so engaged and it's all about the social yeah people want to know what the blue, the blue zones, are. Now let me see where you, when you search, I'm. I'm trying to remember. So okay, there's's favorites memories. Where's your?
AJ:favorites, it's fair to say. You know this better than me. I know Well they keep changing the UI. Okay.
Andrew:People places groups. Okay, I found it. Let me find the best one of my mom and Wendell.
AJ:How would you describe his outlook on the world at that point?
Andrew:I would say that he is very. He's always been concerned, and that's when he was politically active in the 70s.
AJ:Yeah, the terrific footage of him with Earl Butts in those debates. Yeah, I love that. I think that's in the film that was made about him. What was that? Look and See.
Andrew:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that is Look and See was so fantastic that's where I saw that. Okay, now you have, there's my mom and Wendell a few years ago.
AJ:That is amazing. He looks good.
Andrew:Oh, yeah, definitely definitely.
AJ:They both look good.
Andrew:What a great and uh, tanya is such a great partner. That's the other thing about you. Can't do it alone. What? What makes a man great or a woman great is having a partner where they're they can work together.
AJ:I say it timing again with this podcast. This, yeah, I mean 200 and whatever episodes in. That is patently clear with the people I speak with, which is often why I have to speak to. You know both.
Andrew:If it's a couple, yeah, that's nice yeah okay, yeah, do you call it regeneration? What is it I was trying to? Katie mentioned it the other day.
AJ:This is I knew I was setting up for a mouthful when I chose this name, okay, but it just felt compelling for the good reasons of it. But yeah, when you're writing it out it's narration-like story and like cultural story at a deeper level. So, regen narration, oh, regen narration. Two N's, two R's is how you can get a visual.
Andrew:It, even it auto-spelted, yeah bang. Do you realize how cool you are, that you are?
AJ:now.
Andrew:I'm on the radar. Well, you're in the corrected, you know you've been submitted as regeneration here in. We have soil stories. Did you meet Isabel Janiches?
AJ:Oh, Andrew. Some people have been saying that. These are beautiful connections. So the reason we met the Skeets is through a podcast subscriber in Tucson called Chris Deal, who's good friends with Isabel, who then linked us to a person. Chris thought we'd like meeting James and Joyce, but I didn't meet Isabel. Okay, well, it was her. Oh, not only that, I should add before you go on, she worked with a previous podcast guest who we also then met in Berlin in person.
Andrew:Jeff Goebel and his wife Myrna who worked on the Healthy Soil.
Andrew:Act and stuff. It's so brilliant because it was. This is what saved all of us during COVID was our Healthy Soil Zoom meetups monthly and so we could hear about people. You know, dr Johnson and Dr Sue came on and so within days I had built my. I mean because I just felt like it's very inspiring to want to become part of it and do it. And you kind of got to just and I learned so much from my first because James just does it in the barrel without that inner barrel.
Andrew:But, what we learned while we were playing pickleball was that it was so hot on that inner barrel that I should have just left it closed. Yeah, yeah. And it would have continued, but when we opened it it was so hot it conflagrated. So we did learn a lot. Yeah, good experiments, you know.
AJ:The other thing that I'm really curious about is when you say change of mind. You know when we ended up. Is the psychedelics resurgence? Yeah, absolutely, but how that?
Andrew:again the two wolves. But I don't even know if you know that I was part of the DMT studies that. So psychedelics were illegalized in the 70s in the US. That research rebegan here at UNM with a friend of mine, dr Rick Strassman, and I got to be one of the psychonauts in that experiment In the 90s. This was 90s. This was way before Hopkins or any of the other ones who've claimed that they were. So this is. We actually started here. And after the experiments I tell Rick I go, you can't just write a paper That'll be shelved, you have to write a lay person's book. And so I asked my friends at the Grateful Dead John Perry Barlow is a dear friend of mine and we asked them to pony up some money. And I ponied up some of my Silicon Valley money and we set Rick aside and he wrote the Spirit Molecule money. And we set rick aside and he wrote the spirit molecule.
Andrew:That became the best seen documentary of all times on netflix. The most did it. And so that was all. Because during one of the sessions I was told, or whatever you know, it came through to me that this had to be something, that this would be the thing that would change it up? Really that would, because it couldn't. You can't just add more material and more technology is not going to do it. But then look at Burning man and all that, where you know the evolution of that. So this is all happening, co-happening in the early 90s.
Andrew:So I got to play a little bit of a role in the.
AJ:Well, the evolution of Burning man, yeah, and I guess some people's fears of the evolution of the resurgence of psychedelics that it be another corporate co-opting.
Andrew:Oh well, of course it's always. And then I have friends who are investing in. You know, big Pharma trying to do that Now? Here's the problem. Big Pharma relies on you taking it every day for the rest of your life. We're talking about maybe one experience and you're good to go.
AJ:Well, this is interesting, though it's like again, which wolf do you feed Exactly? This is interesting, though it's like again, which wolf do you feed.
Andrew:Exactly, and so. But consider that people like me have always had access to psychedelics, but my mom, she, you know there's so many people that it's not in their realm, so I'm not against. I'm not against the Making it available.
AJ:Making it available.
Andrew:The profiting off of it is something that would never appeal to somebody who works with sacred medicine. Yes that, just there's a disconnect there. It's not it's so transcendental to money and human struggle at that level. Yes that, but it has its own agenda. So you know, terence mckenna was writing about it in the 70s and had written a little book about it, but the endogenously produced dimethyltryptamine was very unresearched until the 90s and it became part of like the rave scene and whatever, and yeah now it's now it's huge, now it's available, now it's gonna do its magic.
Andrew:And the the beautiful thing about these things, they're they're hardly habit forming. Yeah, you know, yeah, one and done, that's it one.
AJ:And done, but was that? That wasn't your story, though One and done was yours.
Andrew:Well, I've been more of an aficionado and you know I just don't drink and I told you I don't smoke weed. You know I don't, and I rarely do psychedelics. I do yoga and I breathe, wow, and I go to Comic-Con. Good stuff, breathe, wow, and I go to comic-con. You know there's good stuff. That's what I, because I sustainability has always been my thing. That's what in at the university that was what I more or less majored in was, um. I had built this little backyard farm in the student ghetto, so I um had this little house and I added the solar greenhouse and built a solar studio. I built an orno with a friend to make bread, just sort of, and I had a geodesic dome that we'd turned into a solar sauna.
Andrew:So, this is a way to get everybody naked. Anyway, katie says this is the all right, it's the wind up, wind it up. Yeah, she's ready to go.
AJ:I gotta go. Well, you guys.
Andrew:Yeah, so all my essays and stuff around psychedelics and stuff, thank, you thanks, I about putting a book together yourself. You see, then I have to do book tours and things like that not interested. I'd rather just continue being me and then, after I go, there'll be somebody who'll say oh, that's interesting, do that, put it together. I just yeah, I have folders and folders of things I've written no doubt, but they're not. Yeah, I have folders and folders of things I've written no doubt, but they're not cohesive. Yeah, yeah, they're not one single narrative.
AJ:There's so many things.
Andrew:That's what I like about this too, and I guess I'm still too busy living to stop and collect. I hear you. But maybe it's not a bad idea, but maybe these little things are what I'm meant to do in this day and age, More when the land speaks as well. Huh, yeah the land speaks Beautiful, thank you.
AJ:Thank you, mate.
