Food of the Gods
6 companion texts
McKenna's argument in Food of the Gods draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural history. He was also systematically wrong about some things. These readings let you verify the claims, test the evolutionary hypothesis, and situate his cultural analysis in the scholarship it engages and ignores.
book
The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss
Dennis McKenna's account of the same events that produced Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations, including La Chorrera, from the perspective of the skeptic and scientist in the partnership. Reads Terence with respect and clear eyes. Essential counterweight.
book
Mycelium Running
The mycologist who has done the most to advance the science of what McKenna claimed about mushrooms. Stamets has proposed the stoned ape hypothesis seriously and done the closest thing to empirical work on it. The scientific companion to Food of the Gods.
book
The Anxious Generation
Haidt documents what social media has done to adolescent mental health since 2012, with the systematic rigor McKenna's television-as-dominator-drug argument lacked. McKenna was right about the mechanism; Haidt proves it happened.
book
The Chalice and the Blade
The book McKenna draws on for his partnership vs. dominator culture framework. Eisler's archaeological and anthropological argument that pre-Bronze Age societies were more gender-equal than what followed. McKenna uses this without fully acknowledging its contested status.
book
Botany of Desire
Pollan's argument that plants have shaped human evolution as much as humans have shaped plants, a more rigorous version of McKenna's plant-human co-evolutionary claims. The stoned ape in literary nonfiction form.
podcast
The Stoned Ape Theory and the Dawn of Human Consciousness
Stamets's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in which he discusses the neuroplasticity evidence for McKenna's evolutionary claims. The most accessible engagement with the hypothesis by someone with relevant expertise.