The Trip Report by Beckley Waves
The Trip Report
#14: Ken Jordan: The Case for Optimism
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#14: Ken Jordan: The Case for Optimism

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves, a Psychedelic Venture Studio.

Today, I am speaking with Ken Jordan, co-founder and Editorial Director of Lucid News, an AP-style journalistic platform covering all aspects of the psychedelic field.

Ken is a longtime journalist, writer, and media entrepreneur. In 2007, Ken co-founded The Evolver and Reality Sandwich, digital media platforms dedicated to the emerging consciousness movement. And in 2020, he and his co-founder, journalist Ann Harrison, founded Lucid News to cover the psychedelics field.

My goal for this conversation is to get a snapshot of the moment, as difficult as that may be, with the help of someone who has been in the weeds as much as I have for the last four years.

Like other guests on The Trip Report, Ken and I regularly connect to swap ideas, share insights, and discuss the evolution of the psychedelic movement. 

A theme of this conversation is the growing pains the field is undergoing, the challenges of macroeconomic headwinds, and the relatively slow progress of policy reform and clinical trials compared to the amount of hype and optimism of 18-24 months ago.

In this conversation, we talk about:

  • The early days of the psychedelic “sector” 

  • Ken’s perspective as a longtime media entrepreneur with an interest and focus on psychedelics and consciousness 

  • The major inflection point that was the MAPS Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, an overwhelming convergence of the many factions and siloed psychedelic communities  

  • “The wild idea,” as Ken says, “that the money right now is in a really active gray market. That's making chocolates you can buy in every cannabis bodega in New York.”

  • Ken’s optimism about the authorities’ loosening of concern about psychedelics

  • The lack of organized opposition against decriminalization and legalization efforts

  • The key differences between the psychedelic renaissance of the 1960s and today

And now, without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Ken Jordan.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

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The Trip Report by Beckley Waves
The Trip Report
The Trip Report is a podcast and newsletter about the business, science, and policy developments of the evolving psychedelic field. While the main organizing theme is psychedelics, it is really about the many different domains that are converging to bring about this field and the assembly of what many believe to be a “New Paradigm” in science, medicine, and our understanding of the human experience. Our goal is to foster an educated and informed psychedelic ecosystem, and to do that, we will feature in-depth conversations with scientists, entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders at the forefront of the psychedelic renaissance.