This is the reason interview with Nik Gillespie.

Today we're digging into the real story behind one of the most mythologized and misunderstood

eras in American history, the psychedelic 60s.

My guest is Susanna Cahalen, whose new book is The Acid Queen, a biography of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, Muse, fugitive, and definitely indicted co-conspirator

of Timothy Leary's psychedelic revolution.

We talk about hippie communes, outlawed drug smuggling the war on drugs, and how the counterculture

at its best moments ran experiments in radical individualism, where personal freedoms were

used to build voluntary communities, founded on altered consciousness, and aesthetic liberation.

The acid queen helps explain how the personal became the political and why libertarians should

care about the messy legacy of the counterculture.

This conversation was recorded at a live event in New York City.

Go to reason.com slash events to get information about the next one.

Here is the Reason interview with Susanna Cahelan.

Susanna Cahelan, thanks for talking to Reason at the Psychedelic Assembly.

Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here, and especially at a place that Rosemary would have loved so much.

Yeah, this has her vibe all over.

Absolutely.

Why don't you very briefly, tell us who, where Rosemary Woodruff Leary is.

Sure.

So Rosemary Woodruff Leary, as much as I hate to start with Timothy Leary,

we are starting with him.

She was the third or fourth wife,

...