I talk with SHARON WEINBERGER, for years the National Security and Foreign Policy Editor at the Wall Street Journal, now the Editor-in-Chief of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, about her new, important, and timely book, VALLEY OF DEATH: How BIG TECH Is Fueling the Future of War. The tech bros are staking out a new relationship with government, taking crucial decisions out of the hands of the people’s representatives - however flawed. Think Starlink in Ukraine. Private command of the development and implementation of potentially self-controlling technologies scares me. You can learn more at sharonweinberger.com.

This past April, Trump signed an executive order accelerating development of psychedelic drugs as medical treatments for mental-health conditions. CHARLES GROB MD has conducted approved clinical research with psychedelics since the early 1990s and has published numerous articles and chapters in the medical and psychiatric literatures. He’s editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader; co-editor (with Roger Walsh) of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics; and co-editor (with James Grigsby) of the Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens. You can learn about his current studies at lundquist.org.

I speak with SHERRY TURKLE, MIT professor & Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology & Self, author of Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation, about her new book, ARTIFICIAL INTIMACY: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. What do we lose by outsourcing emotional needs to machines? How much of the gaps we seek to fill with AI were made worse by social media? Preparing for this conversation, I felt overwhelmed at times by the challenges we face and the power of social media and artificial intimacy to take us away from our only hope, our humanity. You can learn more at sherryturkle.com