The Guardian: Psychedelic drugs: Michael Pollan on the history, science and experience of taking them – books podcast

On this week’s show, we’re talking to Michael Pollan. You may know him from his food writing - books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, or Cooked, which is also now a Netflix show. His latest focus, however, is something quite different – still something consumable – it’s psychedelic drugs.

Famous for being a very hands-on journalist, Michael tried psychedelics himself, including LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca and the venom of the Sonoran desert toad, resulting in a truly astonishing book: How to Change Your Mind, The New Science of Psychedelics.

When he came into the studio, he spoke to Sian about the early groundbreaking medical experiments performed in the 1950s to treat conditions like depression, addiction and PTSD, how that progress was almost killed by political pressure in the 1970s, and the struggle to convey his own experiences on the drugs in writing, when ineffability is a common trait of tripping.  

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The New York Times: The Tragedy of Angela Merkel

The West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, told his countrymen the soothing fairy tale that reunification would not cost as much as they feared. “We’ll pay these expenses out of our pocket change,” he promised them. And like a profane messiah, he promised East Germans “blossoming landscapes.” Quite a while later, Kohl’s promises have proved at least to be half-true: The West was not bankrupted by the $2 trillion it spent to rebuild the East. And in eastern Germany, some cities and landscapes are blossoming more beautifully than many cities and communities in the west of our country. [...]

For me, a traumatized child of the world, in the heart of Europe, it is clear — and I’ve learned this truth firsthand — that the most imperfect democracy is better than the best dictatorship. Three years ago, in an emergency situation, Ms. Merkel chose not to use barbed wire, clubs, water guns, machine guns and tanks to chase away thousands of desperate refugees on the German border, not to chase them back to Austria, Hungary, Greece, Turkey and possibly back to the war in Syria or Afghanistan. Yes, yes, it was a mistake. But it was the smaller, better mistake. The “right” mistake. [...]

At this time, Ms. Merkel is trying to persuade the more advanced of the European states, if not all of them, to uphold the politics of a liberal Europe. Toward that end, she has convened a meeting of the European Union’s top politicians this week. The question on the agenda: How can the European states come to an agreement on securing their external borders without abandoning the notion of a humane asylum policy? In Europe, we are arguing over the question of how to distribute the refugees fairly. If this question should trip Ms. Merkel up, it would be a mere setback for this strong chancellor; for Europe, however, it would be a disaster.

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Haaretz: Angela Merkel Is Losing to the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu Camp

It was a showdown that Merkel, backed up by Germany’s economic might and a near consensus among EU leaders, was winning. In early 2015, she visited Budapest and forced Orban to cancel a tax his government had levied on German companies. But two weeks later, the Russian president visited Budapest as well, and Merkel should have read the signs. She was about to make a series of decisions that would lead to her current predicament.

Throughout 2015, she led the EU’s tough line against the cash-strapped Syriza government in Greece. Merkel insisted on severe austerity measures in return for a bailout. She broke Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, despite the referendum in which a large majority of Greek voters rejected the EU’s terms. The price was bolstering her domineering and coercive image, and that of the EU. A year later, things would end very differently in another referendum. [...]

In 2016, in a series of meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Merkel refused to grant any concessions on the EU’s freedom-of-movement principle for immigrants. Without her support, Cameron had no chance with the EU, and though he continued to support remaining in the union, immigration was to become a main issue used by Brexit-supporters, motivating 52 percent of British voters to support leaving on June 23. [...]

In three years, Merkel has gone from leader of Europe to being almost isolated. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, nominally her ally, has been discreetly distancing himself. The photograph of Merkel at this month’s G-7 summit confronting Trump made liberal hearts soar across the Western world, but it also underlined how the West is now divided into two camps. And the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu camp is swiftly gaining ground.

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SciShow: What Do 'Natural' and 'Artificial' Flavors Really Mean?

What does it actually mean when your snack cake has "naturally flavored" on the package?

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SciShow Psych: Does LSD Really Have A Medical Use?

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statista: The ten countries where it's worst to be female

A new study from the Thomson Reuters Foundation has found that India is the most dangerous country in the world for women. The research was based on a survey of 550 experts on women's issues and criteria included healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual/non-sexual violence and human trafficking.

Ending violence against women in India was made into a national priority after a student was raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi five years ago. Experts have now said that the country is not moving fast enough to eradicate danger to women with rape, sexual harassment/harassment and female infanticide still continuing at alarming levels.

The war-ravaged countries of Afghanistan and Syria came second and third in the study while number 10 is certainly a surprising addition. According to experts, the United States makes the top-10 list of the most dangerous countries for women due to the #MeToo and Time's Up campaigns dominating newspaper headlines and media coverage for months. 

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