Johann Hari Grilling Me
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My old and dear friend Johann has written four bestsellers: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention (discussed on the Dishcast here), and Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs (discussed here). His upcoming book is about the tunnels below Las Vegas.
Four years ago we aired a 2012 interview that Johann did with me — in two parts, here and here.
In this new episode we cover: my first time doing shrooms — in Amsterdam with Matt and Trey; the perversion of many Germans; my first MDMA trip in the early ‘90s; fleeing rave parties to contemplate God; a disastrous trip I experienced when Johann was present — which he calls “a dystopian version of Fawlty Towers”; ego death; Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind; Roland Griffiths; Johann’s psychedelic theory about A Passage to India; how religious peeps integrate bad trips better than non-believers; how early HIV drugs affected a psychedelic trip; feeling agape on drugs; why psychedelics often don’t affect monks and nuns very much; the 15 minutes I believed that God is evil; my mom’s mental illness; the adolescent event that made me a conservative; equity in education; my teenage years in The History Boys; growing up with Keir Starmer; his wild days; our frenemy debates; the Oxford Union; my introversion; coming to America; identity politics; what Foucault got right; Virtually Normal; the Dish blog covering Obama 2008 and the Green Revolution; the indy Dish in 2013; retiring the blog after my doctor said it might kill me; the BLM summer and getting fired from New York mag; Milo Yiannopoulos; Tucker Carlson; Hitchens; The Conservative Soul; Johann prodding about my sex life; Truman; and what I want to achieve in the third trimester of my life. I apologize for TMI.
Chris and I are both now enjoying a summer respite from the news and work. Hope all Dishheads are able to get some time to do the same. Perspective is so critical right now, and our culture is designed to obliterate it. See you when the new season debuts at the end of August.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the discast. |
| 0:33.6 | We are here in sunny, I'm so little giggly. |
| 0:36.6 | In sunny Provincetown, I am en route to the beach because it is bloody hot today. |
| 0:44.4 | And the only place to go is the water. |
| 0:47.0 | But I managed in my hard working day to fit in a podcast. |
| 0:53.4 | And this is going to in a podcast. And this is going to be, |
| 0:54.2 | this is going to be a podcast for the ages. |
| 0:59.5 | First of all, thank you for subscribing. |
| 1:02.0 | And if you haven't subscribed, please do. |
| 1:04.7 | If you haven't, this riveting conversation will peter out halfway through |
| 1:08.8 | and you'll be incredibly frustrated that you can't |
| 1:11.1 | know the conclusion to which we were so fiercely driving and somehow not arriving at in the first |
| 1:18.3 | half. So please do subscribe. We're doing great. We don't, you know, we're not, we don't want to be |
| 1:23.1 | the biggest thing in the world, but we also want to have the best readers and that means, |
| 1:26.9 | and listeners, and that means if you're listening to this, you, and we're not above flattering |
| 1:31.7 | our readers, because you are the best. I mean, you just have to read the email entry every |
| 1:36.7 | week to realize that Chris and I are blessed with probably the smartest and most interesting |
| 1:43.3 | group of community that we have |
| 1:45.9 | out here on the dish. We've built it for a long time, obviously, but it just gets better and |
| 1:49.5 | better. And I just want to thank you for being there. We have, we're about to wind up our season. |
| 1:54.6 | We're going to start a new season. We take a little summer break and we'll start a new season |
| 1:57.8 | in mid-August. So coming up in the fall season, just to give you a little taste, we have Jill Lepore, |
... |
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