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How Margaret Mead's research into utopias helped usher in the psychedelic era
American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead sits for an interview in 1952.
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American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead sits for an interview in 1952.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead came of age in a time of enormous change and uncertainty. In the aftermath of World War I, as technologies like the radio and automobile began to take hold, Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson began to formulate a vision for utopia that relied upon plant-based psychedelics.
“They saw science as something which was responsible for some of the bad things in the world,” historian Benjamin Breen says, “but also [as] something which could be a tool for fixing the world or healing a sick society.”
Breen is an associate professor of history at the University of California Santa Cruz. He says Mead’s research began as an effort to understand the science of expanded consciousness and hypnosis. Her specific interest in psychedelics took hold in 1930 when, while doing fieldwork on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, she noticed that people of the reservation were using peyote.
“Rather than seeing peyote use among the Omaha as something which predates the modern era and goes back to this ancient tradition, she came to see it as something which was modern,” Breen says. “And it allowed people — and not just the Omaha — but potentially people in the rest of the world, to cope with the rapid technological changes they were going through.”
During World War II, Mead and Bateson worked on a team that sought to use hypnosis and mind altering drugs in the fight against fascism. Later experiments went even further afield, with an effort to use LSD to teach dolphins how to talk.
In his new book, Tripping on Utopia, Breen writes about Mead and Bateson’s early scientific research into psychedelic substances — and how their research led to secret CIA experiments using psychedelics for interrogation.
Interview highlights
On the Cold War’s emphasis on altered states of consciousness and psychological warfare
Gregory Bateson, actually, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, writes a memo to the head of the OSS [the Office of Strategic Services] saying that unconventional means of warfare will predominate in the years to come. And so this idea of psychological warfare being more important than the warfare of conventional arms, that becomes really important in the Cold War. … The specter of LSD being released as a gas in a subway system, for instance, that, of course, never comes to pass. But the idea that there’s a war that can be expressed as a form of psychology, that we can fight battles through mass manipulation and through the media and through psychological techniques, I think that’s very, very important in the history of the Cold War — and even in the present. We’re living through it.
On Mead’s involvement with the “Macy Circle,” a group that conducted psychedelic research related to World War II
[The Macy Circle] grows out of this belief that scientists needed to directly intervene in the [World War II] effort, and specifically scientists who are studying consciousness, like anthropologists like Bateson and Mead, but also psychiatrists and psychologists. They tried to find ways that they could contribute. What this really looked like in practice was what came to be known as “psychological warfare.” Forms of propaganda, ways of understanding how altered states of consciousness could be used in the war. And this led to an interest in hypnosis. It led to an interest in what was called “truth drugs,” and it led to the very early psychedelic research in the United States.
Mead and Bateson are not conducting that research, but they’re crucial for bringing together this group of people from different fields and framing it in a way that allowed psychedelic science to flourish as a potential pathway toward benevolent treatments, treatments that were healing for society. But also — and this is the really fascinating thing about the Macy Circle — it also got the attention of intelligence organizations and the military. So by the early Cold War, by about 1952, the Macy Circle is being co-opted by the CIA — and that’s the beginning of what I see as this really important split in the history of psychedelics between the public branch and the secret branch.
On NASA-funded programs in the ’60s to teach dolphins to speak using LSD
The person at the center of this story is a guy named John C. Lilly, who Bateson, in about 1961, ends up writing to and they become friends. Lilly invites Gregory Bateson to join him at this dolphin research lab he’s set up with NASA funding and U.S. Navy funding in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and John C. Lilly is a physiologist, is a kind of early neuroscientist who’s really deeply committed to this idea that using things like computers and emerging scientific techniques, it should be possible to communicate not just with dolphins, but with whales as well, with cetaceans. …
And meanwhile, Lilly is injecting the dolphins with LSD and himself with LSD, and spending literally hours at a time trying to talk to them. And again, you can listen to these recordings. If you search online for the words John C. Lilly, dolphin, LSD, Stanford, you will find many, many tape recordings of this – and he doesn’t make much progress, suffice to say.
On Mead’s bisexuality
One of the really fascinating things about Margaret Mead that drew me into this whole book project was that she was also deeply secretive. It’s hard to convey just how secretive and private she really was. Her archive is enormous, and it seems like she’s an open book. But then when you dig into that archive, there’s all these little clues and hints that there’s other parts of her life that she’s concealing from virtually everyone. In fact, at one point she says, [anthropologist and lover] Ruth Benedict is the only person who really knew her.
[After Benedict’s death in 1948], from that point onwards, by Mead’s own account, she’s kind of a closed off person. She was open about her bisexuality with people close to her, but in the world of the ’40s and ’50s, to go public with that would have been not just career-ending, but potentially life-ruining. And she knew people this had happened to. It’s hard not to know people like that if you’re moving government circles, especially in the aftermath of World War II with the McCarthy era.
On Mead’s distinction between sexuality and gender, and seeing both in a spectrum
Early on, she’s truly radical and I think really deserves to be remembered as a pioneer in understanding specifically the division between gender and sexuality, which is now a widespread distinction that we make, but in the 30s, that was a very new idea that she helped develop.
On how the therapeutic use of psychedelics now is similar to the ’50s
To a striking extent, what we’re coming back to now in the 2020s looks a lot like what people like Gregory Bateson and the people he was working with in the 1950s were developing. So the idea is that you are in a comfortable environment, you’re listening to music you like … you’re with people you feel good around. It’s not like someone in a lab coat observing you, and you have a goal in mind. There’s an intentionality to the way psychedelic therapy is conducted today. You’re trying to solve some problem in your life or think through an issue. Those are all things that were developed in the 1950s. To an extent, they were things that got erased or largely forgotten by the more radical counter-cultural approach to LSD in the ’60s, where it becomes more of a recreational drug or imbued with mystical significance. I think a lot of what we’re seeing now with psychedelic therapy is actually a return to the older model.
Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Bill This Time
State of the Union is Hot; The Tribal Council Convenes Again; A Glow Up In the Doll Aisle
Panel Questions
The Toot Tracker
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell three stories about a travel hack in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Olympic Swimmer Lilly King answers our questions about Lil’ Kings
Olympic Swimmer Lilly King plays our game called, “Lilly King meet these Lil’ Kings” Three questions about short kings.
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Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Getting Cozy With Cross Country Skiing; Pickleball’s New Competition; Bees Get Freaky
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All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
Predictions
Our panelists predict, after American Girls, what’ll be the next toy to get an update.
Law Roach
Zendaya and Tom’s Wedding Already Happened …
Y’all Missed It!!!
Published
Zendaya and Tom Holland are married … so claims her longtime stylist, Law Roach.
Here’s the deal … the celebrity stylist — who started styling Zendaya way back in 2011 — spoke to Access Hollywood on the Actors Awards red carpet where he sang out “The wedding has already happened, you missed it.”
Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.
The AH reporter asks in shock if that’s true … and, Law responds by saying it’s “very true” before walking off.
This isn’t the first time Tom and Zendaya’s relationship status has made headlines on a red carpet … remember at the Golden Globes in 2025, Zendaya had a ring on that finger — and, the next day, we found out the two were engaged.
TMZ.com
Zendaya and Tom met on the set of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in 2016, started dating a couple years later and went public with their relationship in 2021.
We’ve reached out to Tom and Zendaya’s teams … so far, no word back.
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