We’ve all heard the story.Serotonin: the “happiness chemical.”Too little, and you’re depressed.Boost it, and you’re back to normal.

It’s a neat narrative. Comforting.But like most comforting stories, it’s incomplete.

In this episode, we explore serotonin not as a single note of happiness, but as the tuning fork of the brain. A molecule that doesn’t just adjust volume: it sets rhythm, balance, and resonance.

Far from being about “mood” alone, serotonin touches almost everything: sleep, appetite, memory, social bonds, even the fragile architecture of the ego itself. And the most surprising part? Over 90% of it isn’t even in your brain.

🔎 In this episode, we cover:

* Why serotonin is more than the “happiness chemical”

* How it shapes perception, rhythm, and sense of self

* The gut–brain connection and where most serotonin is really found

* Why this molecule is central to both everyday experience and psychedelic journeys

Serotonin isn’t just a switch for happiness. It’s a hidden system of tuning, weaving context into consciousness.

In Episode 8, we take a step back, way back.

Before the receptors.Before the psychedelics.Before the mind was even a scientific question.

We trace the long arc from ancient alchemy to modern neurochemistry, and ask:How did manipulating matter lead us to question the mind?

This episode travels through:

⚗️ The esoteric roots of chemistry: from transformation to transmutation🔬 The rise of laboratory science: and the industrial economy that fueled it🧠 The birth of neurochemistry as a serious science of the soul📉 The impact of war, profit, and pharmacology on how we study consciousness🌍 And how spiritual inquiry was rebranded as scientific “objectivity”

What emerges is not a clean timeline, but a pattern.A poetic throughline, where the search for gold became the search for serotonin.Where philosopher-scientists became drug developers.And where the lab became a new kind of altar.

If we want to understand the modern psychedelic renaissance, we have to understand how we got here, chemically, culturally, and economically.

This episode sets the stage for everything to come, especially as we begin to explore how psychedelics helped force science to look inward again.

As always, thank you for listening, reading, and wondering alongside me.

Posted for all subscribers. Full script and bibliography available to paid supporters.

In this episode, we turn inward: from the molecules themselves to the maps they follow.

We begin with a simple question:How does a puff of smoke or a drop of DMT produce a shift in mood, memory, or meaning?

The answer, almost always, begins with the receptor.

This episode traces:

🧠 How the discovery of receptors transformed neuroscience🌀 Why "locks and keys" are more poetic and powerful than they sound📡 How psychedelic substances interact with specific neural circuits🧬 The brain’s natural “listening stations” and what they’re tuned to hear🕸️ What the receptor model reveals about connection, perception, and even selfhood

We explore how chemicals don’t force effects on the brain, they participate in a dialogue. A whisper into a system already wired for meaning.

To feel anything is to be in relationship.And to alter that feeling is to shift the pattern of connection between molecules, between neurons, between worlds.

As always, this project is ad-free, independently made, and crafted for those who believe that the mind is more than matter, and that matter might just be meaning in disguise.

Thanks for being here.