The Acid Queen: An Interview with Susannah Cahalan

A conversation with the author of The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary.

If you've ever read anything about the history of psychedelics, the name Timothy Leary will probably sound familiar. He was a Harvard psychologist who researched psychedelics within academia before getting fired in 1963 and taking his experiments underground. But you might never have heard of Timothy's wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary. We talk with author Susannah Cahalan about her book on Rosemary and how she played a quiet but foundational role in our early understanding of LSD. We also talk about our history of pinning our hopes on a miracle chemical and why some people are skeptically embracing psychedelics today.

Host: Alexis Pedrick Executive Producer: Mariel Carr Senior Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Sound Design: Samia Bouzid Fact-Checking: Alexandra Atiya

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

In this interview, the Timothy Leary Papers were described as consisting of 400 boxes. The collection actually includes 610 boxes, 11 oversized folders, 22 tubes, 67 audio files, and 1.78 Gigabytes of computer files. A full list can be found here.

In this interview, the Rosemary Woodruff Leary Papers were described as ancillary. Technically, the New York Public Library does not refer to the collection as "ancillary" or "secondary." Rosemary's collection has its own separate call number. More information can be found here.

In this interview, the Rosemary Woodruff Leary Papers were described as consisting of 25 boxes. The collection actually includes 24 boxes, 1 volume, and 11.75 mb of computer files. A full list can be found here.

In this interview, Rosemary's mystical experience was described as taking place when she was seven years old. The incident actually took place in 1943 during the summer after her 8th birthday.

In this interview, Martin McLuhan was described as having told Timothy Leary to sell the LSD experience like Coca-Cola. Martin actually told Leary to sell it like Pepsi.