Audiobooks by Justin Smith-Ruiu

On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

"“Like the best psychedelic experiences, On Drugs estranges the familiar, familiarizes the strange, and returns us to reality (whatever that is) with a broadened sense of the possible. Justin Smith-Ruiu is simply one of the most interesting thinkers alive, and he has found an ideal subject for his peculiar brand of brilliance.”—Christopher Beha, author of The Index of Self-Destructive Acts   In the late, post-lockdown days of the pandemic, grappling with personal loss and existential uncertainty, Justin Smith-Ruiu found himself standing in a California cannabis dispensary, pondering a question his tribe of fellow philosophers have often dismissed as too simple: How did I get here? That moment marked a transition for him—it was the start of a journey Smith-Ruiu would take to experience his own mind and the world around him in a new, clarifying way.    On Drugs blends autobiography, intellectual history, and philosophical inquiry to explore the transformative impact of psychedelics on human consciousness and thought. Drawing on his personal experiences as “an articulate guinea pig,” Smith-Ruiu argues that psychedelics upend our assumptions about the nature of reality—and thus force a reckoning with the very foundations of Western philosophy.    Provocative, profound, and deeply personal, On Drugs points toward a radically new way of thinking about the world and our capacity to understand it. "

Justin Smith-Ruiu (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

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Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason

"This audiobook narrated by Jeff Harding reveals the surprising ways the pursuit of rationality leads to an explosion of irrationality It's a story we can't stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the 'rational animal.' But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today—from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump—Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely."

Justin Smith-Ruiu (Author), Jeff Harding (Narrator)

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