Welcome to the After-On podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurry and meant to bring you

to a top percentile understanding of something important.

Also, whether you're into start-up or ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your time, engage

your mind, and you'll be glad you did it.

Especially this week, when we'll be talking to...

George Goldsmith and Kachem Alavskaya, a married couple whose start-up, Compass Pathways,

will soon launch the largest FDA quality, triple-blind study ever of a psychedelic drug,

in hopes of carrying a terrible medical condition.

The drug is psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, and the

condition is treatment-resistant depression. This awful malady plagues over 100 million

people worldwide, and is the term treatment-resistant implies, it lacks a cure.

Now, if you've ever traipsed around the woods with some friends experimenting with magic

mushrooms, or if you know someone who has and have heard reports of this sort of thing,

the clinical experience with this drug is very different.

Then, on the day of psilocybin session, they would come in early to the center, while

it's a hospital room, we furnish the room so it looks like a living room with the ambient

light and music system, especially design playlists, so patients take their capsules, put

on the eye shades, headphones, two therapists present in the room, and the experience lasts

about five, six hours.

Now, if that sounds a little flaky to you, consider who George and Kachem have drawn to their

...